Great Expectations
by hailingstars
Summary: A few years after Thanos is defeated, Peter violates a minor condition of the newly revised accords and Nick Fury places him under house arrest in Tony's secluded cabin, where Tony and Peter are forced to deal with their issues. Full Summary Inside. No Endgame spoilers here folks.
1. Chapter 1

Full Summary

A few years after Thanos is defeated, Peter drops out of MIT and walks away from his responsibilities as the future air of Stark Industries.

The world loses its mind.

As does Tony, which is Peter's number one reason for avoiding him and his phone calls. That's easy when the entire world thinks Tony is dead, but becomes significantly harder after Nick Fury places Peter under house arrest in Tony's secluded cabin after a minor infraction of the revised accords.

* * *

**A/N: Welcome to my new story! This is in no way me abandoning any other story I have going on right now, but just what my brain wanted to write at the moment.**

**This is a Post-Endgame, Tony is still alive (because I'm getting nervous) and a slightly older Irondad and Spiderson relationship! Please enjoy, or not. It's whatever. Oh, and also want to point out this probably won't be that long. Maybe 7 chapters.**

* * *

A hanger screeched against a metal bar as Peter struggled to free his clothes. He cringed at the sound, but he didn't stop wrestling with the bottom of his shirt, until it flew from the hanger with unexpected force and smacked him in the face. He threw it in the open duffel bag on the floor of his closet, then decided the clothes in the dresser were both easier and faster to collect.

Peter pulled them from the drawers in wads, shoved them inside the bag and began working on the zipper, tugging on it while it stayed stubbornly stuck on the tracks. He applied extra strength and paused to let out a low growl when that strength crushed zippered and rendered it useless.

It was just that kind of day.

Lately Peter just lived that kind of life.

He shouldered the bag without zipping it shut and marched out of his closet, out of his bedroom and into the large, breezy hallways of the Avenger's compound. As he maneuvered through them, he pushed wads of clothes further into the bag, preventing them from spilling out and over and onto the floor.

Peter turned a corner and stopped in his tracks when his eyes landed on Black Widow. He gripped the strap of the duffel bag tighter, considering his options. After a breath, he shifted his head down, to stare at the floor, kicked up his pace and hoped she hadn't noticed him or his bag.

This, just like the zipper, didn't work.

She fell in line next to him as he carried on with his escape.

"Where are you going?"

"Home."

"You can't go home," said Nat, although Peter disagreed. He'd already packed, and already told valet to bring up his car. "We have a debriefing in twenty."

"We showed up, fought valiantly and the bad guy still got away," said Peter. He pushed open the glass doors with his forearm, paused, then titled his head back to look at her. "You're welcome by the way. Now you don't have to go either."

He continued his exit, letting the door fall shut behind him, as he stepped out into sunlight that blinded him. Peter squinted, dropped his bag on the concrete, crouched down and began searching his disorganized mess of a bag for his sunglasses. He found them, on the very bottom, and when he pulled them out, clumps of clothes came with them.

Peter growled, again, as he shoved shirts and shorts back inside, and ignored Nat, as she stood above him, having followed him out into the glaring sun. She waited until he was standing up straight with his sunglasses on to continue with her lecture.

"You conveniently forgot the part where it's your fault we failed to apprehend the suspect, which is also why you're running away now."

"I'm not running away," said Peter. "And shouldn't you be harassing the sergeant about blame? He's the one dulling out orders, like we're all his little soldiers just standing by, waiting for commands." He swatted at a fly buzzing near his ear. "It's distracting."

Her eyes narrowed cut in at him and her frown deepened and those were both good signs that Peter was annoying her to the point where she would leave him alone. That was best with teammates, he had learned, to keep them at a distance to keep them from the truth.

Peter just needed one last push.

"Hey," he said. "Maybe you should let him know in your meeting that he isn't Steve."

"And you're not Tony," said Nat. "Quit acting like you have to do everything by yourself."

Peter looked away and watched as the valet driver pulled his car up to the front entrance where they stood. He didn't need any reminders that he wasn't Tony. It was clear to him, and everyone else, that he would never measure up and maybe didn't care to try. Peter wasn't Tony, but as he tipped the valet, he was sure he was Peter Parker, either.

Nat's stare stayed with him as he threw his bag over the driver's seat and into the passenger's seat.

"Peter."

There was something softer in her voice that caused him to hesitate, standing outside his car with his hand placed on top of the open door.

"Are you sure this is a good idea? Fury's already pissed, and you know Spider-Man isn't allowed to interfere in Queens."

"So I'm never allowed to go home again?"

"So you'll be tempted," she told him. "And you don't want to push Fury right now. I'm not sure you'll like the consequences if you do."

"I'll be fine, Nat."

He slid into the driver's seat and shut the door, adjusting the stereo before putting the car in gear and speeding away from the compound that wasn't his home, inside of a car he hadn't picked out or bought for himself.

He spared a look in the rearview mirror at Nat. She stood perfectly still, watching him intently, just like the rest of the world.

* * *

By the time Peter rolled into Queens, he had twelve missed calls.

He sat at his kitchen table, across from the chair that had Happy's suit jacket thrown over it and scrolled through them. Three were from the great Sergeant James Barnes, one single call was from Pepper Potts, a couple more were attached to unknown numbers, and the rest were from Tony.

Peter sighed and looked around the empty apartment. A few dishes sat in the sink. Happy's wallet and keys were on the counter, but there wasn't a soul in sight. He ignored his missed calls, dialed May instead and pressed his phone to his ear, letting his eyes trail over to the window where the sky grew darker with storm clouds as he listened to the rings.

She didn't pick up.

He looked away from the storm brewing outside and locked his eyes on Happy's liquor cabinet. Just seconds later he was on his feet, and searching through it, and not stopping until he found something pricey, something worthy to be found in Tony's collection.

Peter took a nice, long swig of the good stuff as he crossed over into the living room and sunk into the couch cushions. Finding the remote nearby, he switched on the TV, only to regret it immediately.

Annoying voices of news commentators blared through the speakers, filling the silence, and of course, they were talking about Peter. Ever since Tony's will leaked to the press, Peter Parker was all the twenty-four news networks could talk about. It got progressively worse when Peter made his decision to split from MIT a few days ago.

His inheritance, and as some of the more dramatic commentators claimed, the future of Stark Industries, depended entirely on Peter receiving a diploma from Tony's alma mater.

"…never seen such a thing, for someone to act so irresponsibly in the face of being given a multi-billion dollar company."

"Can we really be surprised, Chuck? This kid was handpicked by Tony Stark, and this is a stunt straight from his glory days."

Peter took another drink from the bottle.

His phone rang, and when he saw May's picture light up the screen, he muted the TV and answered.

"Peter?"

"Hey," said Peter. Wherever May was, it was loud, blasting with music, and reminded him of the parties back at MIT. "Where are you guys? I came home for the weekend."

"I'm sorry, Pete. You should have called first," she said. "Happy and I are away this weekend… well, it's actually kind of great. We're on a cruise."

"A – a cruise?"

"Yeah, you know Happy can be so romantic," she said. "And spontaneous."

"That's… awesome, Aunt May."

Peter took another drink from the bottle while he waited for her to add more to the conversation, but to his complete horror, instead of her replying, he heard Happy's voice boom through the music in the background, asking who was on the phone and demanding to talk to him.

Happy's gruff voice filled Peter's ears. "Are you outta your mind?"

He suppressed a groan, shut his eyes and let his head fall back against the back of the couch.

"Or just trying to give Tony a heart attack?"

"Can it be both?"

"It has to be both for you to quit school without talking to one of us about it first."

"In my defense," said Peter. "I didn't think you all would find out about it this fast."

There was a heavy, annoyed breath through the speaker. "With the way the media's been hounding you lately, you didn't think we'd find out about it?"

"Well when you put it that w – "

"Do you know who Tony calls when he can't get a hold of you?" asked Happy. "May. Then me, so do us both a favor and call him back so he'll leave us alone. Do you hear me, Peter? Call Tony."

Happy didn't give him another chance to speak. He had already passed the phone back to May, who insisted on keeping the conversation going in that same direction.

"He's worried about you. You know you'll both feel better when you call him," said May. "I'm worried too. You're okay, right?"

"Yeah, I'm completely fine."

There was some static on the other side, and Peter imagined she was readjusting the position of the phone on her ear.

"Peter," said May. "I love you, so much."

"I love you too."

The phone clicked off. May had hung up without saying goodbye, and Peter was alone again.

He didn't understand why everyone in his life, and even outside of his life, were acting so dramatically about this. Saying they loved him like he was terminal, asking if he was okay, if he knew what he was doing, all because he dropped out of school. Dramatic. All of them, and he planned to keep this in mind whenever any of them accused him of being theatrical.

Peter scrolled back to his missed call screen and hovered his thumb above Tony's name. He wanted, more than anything, to be able to call him. Especially after his hard day. He craved the comfort, the guidance, the person who would listen to all his Avengers related frustrations and be on his side, no matter what.

But that didn't exist anymore. He knew pushing that button was inviting just another lecture about MIT, and he couldn't hear that. Not at the moment.

He dropped his phone, traded it for the remote and switched the channel before unmuting it.

What greeted him wasn't much better than the previous station.

A report about recent disappearances around Queens filled the screen and the air. According to the info graph that flashed across the screen, it was getting worse. Peter leaned forward to get a better look at it, but instead, knocked the bottle of liquor by his side over, spilling it both all over himself and the couch.

Great. He'd have to clean that out of the cushions before May and Happy came home.

He looked back up at the TV just in time to see a sad, news anchor, staring right at him.

"It really makes you wonder, where is Spider-Man when we really need him?"

Peter switched off the TV. Enough of that.

Spider-Man was with the Avengers. Spider-Man obeyed the law, and stayed out of trouble, and helped out only when the Avengers were called for large scale threats. Spider-Man, like the other Avengers, was controlled by Nick Fury, just like Peter Parker was controlled by the last will and testament of Tony Stark, a man who was still alive to a select few but dead to the rest of the world.

According to Fury, and the document on which Peter signed away his life, Spider-Man the vigilante was both bad for publicity and unnecessary. Queens didn't need superheroes to help out with petty crimes. Queens didn't need a friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, but the rest of the world needed him to take his feet off the ground.

So he became Fury's weapon, and at the same time, he became Tony's billion-dollar heir.

He was tired of both.

Thunder crackled outside, something glass shattered, a car alarm started to scream. It was the music of Queens, the sound that he had missed, and something he desperately wanted to protect. If people were going missing, and he did nothing except let it happen, well that seemed worse than breaking something he signed months ago to appease the government.

He stood, sending the now empty bottle of liquor on the floor, and marched back to his bedroom without bothering with the alcohol soaking the couch cushions. He'd worry about it later.

Peter suited up, and for the first time, in a long time, jumped out his window and into Queens, into the thunder and the lightning and the violence to protect the neighborhood he loved.


	2. Chapter 2

Echoes of a woman's screams swirled around in Peter's head. He knew they didn't make sense, that they weren't really happening in the present, but his head was hazy.

Hazy in a way that remembered in flashes. Those moments didn't tell a whole story. They were pieces to a puzzle, the puzzle of how Peter ended up handcuffed to the seat of an airplane, thirty thousand feet into the air, and sitting across from Nick Fury.

He remembered stumbling into his apartment, falling flat on his face and looking up to see Fury sitting at his kitchen table. He'd cursed with his face into the carpet and allowed two SHIELD agents to scrape him up off the floor.

He'd been asked to change out of his Spidey suit, and he did. He was wearing sweats and plain t-shirt when he handed his suit over to Fury, then followed him and his agents out of the Parker apartment and into an unmarked car. He'd been both quiet and compliant, his veins pumping with whatever drug they dosed him with.

Peter had thrown up on the stretch of concrete between the car and the plane. With his hands on his knees, he had wrenched out every last bit of anything that was sitting in his stomach. After one of the SHIELD goons handcuffed him to his seat, they handed him a trash can.

He wasn't holding that anymore. His stomach felt better, so the trash can went on the empty seat next to him, and his head was feeling a bit better to, starting to clear up out of the haze that had been tormenting him.

Peter stared at the restraint locked around his wrist. He rattled it, metal clanked against metal, and he remained transfixed by the sight and sound, both confused by its existence and attempting to be free of it.

"It's not coming off," said Fury. Peter's head snapped up, becoming aware, for the second time, that he was being watched. "It's Vibranium."

He could rip the armrest off the seat, if he wanted, and he definitely did, but he caught sight of Fury's scowl.

"You break my plane, you buy it."

"Is this really necessary?" He gave it one last tug before giving up completely and letting his arm fall back into his lap.

"We weren't sure how you were going to come off your high."

"Is this you admitting that SHIELD had me drugged?"

"Absolutely not," said Fury. "You did that yourself."

"What? No I didn't take any drugs."

Fury stared at him like he was stupid, and Peter strained his memory.

His last memory that was clear from the haze was jumping out of his window and into a Queens thunderstorm. After came a big stretch of black, followed by the flashes. Maybe, after suiting up and swinging off into the storm, he crashed a party and decided to get high, but that didn't sound like something he would do.

What was more likely, in Peter's head, was Fury drugging him, and lying to him, and dragging him into a plane and forcing him to go to… wherever they were going.

Peter craned his head up and tried to look out the window. It was all black, dead of night, and they were too high up to see city lights, if there were any below them to be seen.

He fixed Fury with another stare. "Where are you taking me?"

"You need a little timeout," said Fury, and it was Peter's turn to scowl.

Even at twenty-one, he was still the youngest Avenger and still was constantly on the receiving end of these kind of jokes. He was old enough to sign contracts he didn't fully understand, and fight other people's battles while ignoring his own, but also young enough to be talked down to.

"I guess I'm supposed to pretend I know what that means."

"It means you're under house arrest."

Peter looked around, as much as the handcuff would allow him to turn in his seat, just to make sure the drugs Fury slipped him weren't still messing with his head, and he was, in fact, on an airplane and not in Queens.

"How can I be on house arrest if you've taken me away from my home?"

"Don't be a smartass," said Fury. "I'm not stupid enough to let you stay in that apartment by yourself. You need supervision, clearly."

Fury straightened up in his seat and checked his watch, while Peter sunk down in his and refused to do anything except aim a level glare on the man ruining his life. It wasn't on purpose. He felt this was the only natural response to have after someone telling him they're having him locked up.

"Come now, Pete, it isn't like I'm intruding on any of your plans. I've heard your schedule got cleared wide open as of a couple of days ago."

"So you're doing this because I dropped out of school?"

"I'm doing this because you're pissing me off," said Fury. "And don't act stupid. You broke the law. You're lucky you're not being tossed into a cell on the raft, instead you get a luxury cabin in the woods."

"C-cabin?"

Fury looked at his watch again. "If we're on time, we should almost be there."

There being Tony's secret safehouse, Peter was sure, but he didn't want to give Fury the satisfaction of knowing how much that idea terrified him by whining about it. Another lecture, probably a louder and more animated one, waited for him at his new prison, and Peter already knew the ending to this one.

It was Peter back at MIT.

Once Tony gave the order, he wouldn't be able to disobey. Not Tony. Somehow his influence was stronger and more frightening than Fury's, who had the weight of the government to back him up.

This fight was over before it even started. Fury won, and Tony won, and, as soon as he was allowed back into the real world again, Peter would go back to being their tool. It'd been a short rebellion, but at least he tried.

He fell into a moody silence, trying to stare out the window as the plane descended from the sky. There wasn't anything to look at. Just darkness and more darkness and all of that looked exactly the same.

* * *

Once they were off the plane, the walk over to Tony and Pepper's cabin was short. Maybe five minutes, but it felt even shorter. Dread bubbled in Peter's stomach, and did what dread did best, made time speed up, and in doing so, made his reunion with Tony closer and closer.

It was May's voice in his head as he marched forward through the trees with Fury and two agents behind him.

"Just think of how much better you'll feel when it's over."

She had told him that very thing countless times throughout his childhood. Before shots, before dentist appointments, and once, before Uncle Ben reached into his mouth and yanked out a loose tooth. Those were some wise, powerful words, from a wise, powerful lady, but they didn't work here.

Peter didn't think so, at least. The haze between him and Tony was bigger than childhood fears, and yet, there was something very childish about the way all that dread ebbed away when he came out of the trees and saw Tony sitting on his oak porch, under the only light, probably, for miles.

He wore a robe, with a plain shirt and pajamas pants underneath, and he had a mug in his hand, like a dad waiting up for a kid out past curfew.

Tony was a comforting sight after the bad night Peter had but couldn't remember. He wanted a hug, and craved some guidance, but as he stepped closer to the porch, he knew he couldn't shake off his resentment, even if he wanted. It made him miss being young, when everything was one way or the other, and complexity of missing someone he also wanted to hide from was too big for his brain.

Peter wondered if there was a solution to the MIT problem that would satisfy both of them, or if Tony would even care to try to find one before simply shouting at him to go back. He feared that the most, because if Tony made him go back to school, Peter didn't know if he'd ever look at Tony and see comfort again.

Tony stood from the wooden rocking chair to greet them, at the exact same time Peter sat down on the bottom step of the porch to allow one of Fury's drones attach a tracking device to his ankle. Peter's back might have been turned to Tony, but he could feel his eyes on him.

"Not that I don't appreciate you personally delivering my kid to me," said Tony. "But when is someone gonna explain to me what the hell is going on?"

"Peter can fill you in," said Fury. "He's got three months to catch you up on all the details."

"Three months? What am I supposed to do here for three months?" asked Peter. He looked at the agent, a woman with brown hair pulled back in a tight bun, who was fastening the tracking anklet and said, "That's too tight."

She narrowed her eyes at him, making her disgust clear, then proceeded to adjust the anklet.

"I don't care what you do," said Fury. "As long as you're out of my way. Believe it or not the world doesn't revolve around you."

That was news to Peter. Everyone on the planet was invested in his personal life decisions. Instead of responding to Fury, he looked back at the agent. "That's too loose."

Her glare deepened, and she went back to adjusting.

"Hello? Yeah hi," said Tony. "Maybe you might remember me. The person you called and woke up in the middle of the night to assign babysitting duty? Still waiting for someone to answer my question."

"Fury drugged me," said Peter.

"Did you drug him?" asked Tony. There was a familiar, dangerous undercurrent to his voice that made the edges of Peter's mouth twitch.

"No," said Fury, as if this answer were obvious and therefore, somehow, trustworthy. "He drank an entire bottle of bourbon in a single evening and he's confused as to why he was out of it on the plane."

Peter opened his mouth to state his truth, that there were a lot of things he didn't remember, but he very vividly remembered spilling the contents of the liquor bottle into the couch cushions, not into his mouth. He calculated the chances of the two men who ran his life believing him, then shut his mouth and didn't say a word.

He watched as Tony and Fury stepped away and had a conversation Peter could've listened to if he cared to. He didn't.

Fury gave a head nod to the agent still fidgeting with the ankle bracelet. She made a swift movement with her hand, slid the metal against his skin, and walked away.

"Hey. That's too – "

"Deal with it."

Peter stayed on the bottom step of the porch, and Tony joined him. He sat down close enough for their shoulders to bump. Together, they watched Fury and the SHIELD agents disappear into the trees. Peter kept his gaze straight ahead, at those trees, long after they were gone, hoping to put off eye contact and the inevitable conversation with Tony as long as possible.

The sounds in the country were different than in Queens. He heard crickets, for once, and somewhere, a stream or a river flowing. It was a different kind of relaxing from home, and it lulled Peter into a false sense of security.

He wasn't ready for Tony's hand clasping around his chin and forcing him into the eye contact he didn't want.

"Do you have a drinking problem we need to discuss?" asked Tony. His grip was tight, and his eyes were searching Peter's for something that wasn't there.

"No," said Peter.

Tony let go of him and loosened up, taking him at his word, and Peter was surprised by a rush of pride that Tony hadn't yet written him off as liar, despite everything that had happened.

"We have a lot to talk about," said Tony, and Peter braced himself for a long night of them yelling at each other on a porch in the country, with no one but Morgan, and possibly Pepper, around to hear the screaming. "But I think you need some rest first, and something in your stomach."

"I'm not really hu- "

He was cut off, mid-sentence, by one of Tony's cutting glares.

"Food sounds great."

Tony helped him to stand, and directed him inside, through a few hallways, and into the kitchen where Peter took a seat at the table while Tony went to work behind the stove. That was also strangely comforting.

It felt like something from the time from before everything got all messed up, all tied down with responsibilities that were too big and resentment for the one who put them there.

He decided that he could be happy, despite having three months of his life stolen from him, and he could enjoy this time with Tony and Morgan and Pepper. He didn't have to avoid Tony anymore, it'd be pretty impossible anyway, as long as he could avoid talking about MIT and SI, as long as he could pretend this haze between them didn't exist.

It'd be a challenge, but a worthy one, and besides Peter didn't have much else to focus on anymore, anyway.

* * *

A/N: Here's chapter two! And a big thanks to the reviewers and all the people who favorited and subscribed already. Welcome and I hope you enjoy the story, and have a great Sunday!


	3. Chapter 3

Peter spent the first day of his detainment exploring every inch of every room in the enormous mansion that Tony called a cabin. He supposed it had the aesthetics of a cabin, all wooden walls and fancy oak pillars, but the cabins from Peter's childhood were small and cramped and cozy. They weren't spacious, with a theater, a workshop for a basement, and for a reason Peter couldn't figure out, a bowling alley.

The mansion-cabin had anything and everything a person could want, except freedom, but freedom was what Peter craved the most. Freedom from inside the walls, freedom from the black tracking device fastened too tightly around his left ankle, freedom from the crushing responsibility Tony charged him with, and most of all, freedom from that dread pooling in his stomach.

Despite seeing and talking to Tony often, they both managed to avoid talking about MIT and Stark Industries, but that didn't stop the dread. Peter knew it was coming, even if Tony was just as eager to avoid it and keep the peace as he was.

By the second day, Peter had seen everything in the cabin, at least twice, and resorted to going outside, to the very little space allotted to him. As it turned out, Fury took the word house arrest literally, and as a result, despite Tony's backyard being as spacious as the rest of his home, Peter was only permitted inside the gated pool area.

An early fall breeze ruffled through his hair as he walked by the pool's edge and towards the end of the concrete that surrounded the pool, towards where the grass met the black metal bars that gated off the pool from the rest of the yard.

That was for Morgan's benefit, so she wouldn't accidently wander over and fall in when the family was outside but not swimming. Peter knew that, but as he gripped the metal bars with both his hands, he couldn't help thinking they were keeping him in just as much as they were keeping Morgan out.

Beyond the bars were trees, and beyond the trees, a stream, and somewhere far, far away, the ocean. A reckless thought crossed his mind. He could bend the bars, crush them in his grip, and escape into trees. Hell, he could open the gate and simply walk out without breaking anything.

Then he felt the tight ring around his ankle and realized the bars that made him a prisoner were invisible, but they were still there.

"Still as dramatic as ever I see," said Tony. Peter turned and saw him sticking his head out of the door. "You know Fury might have given you more slack if you hadn't annoyed the hell out of him."

Peter kept his hands on the bars and gave him a glare.

Tony returned it with a grin. "We're about to watch Moana. Wanna join?"

"You watched that yesterday."

"We watch Moana every day."

Peter looked at him, just wearing jeans and a regular t-shirt and socks, talking about watching a Disney musical in the middle of the day. It was tempting. Peter from before would have jumped at the invitation from Mr. Stark, but Peter from the present wanted to wallow in his misery.

He declined and ignored the way Tony's grin turned to a frown as he did. Once Tony disappeared into the house, Peter walked around the wrap-around porch to the front yard, where his options weren't much better. One foot off the last step would send a plane full of SHIELD agents to Tony's front door.

Peter dropped down to lay belly first on the wooden porch. House arrest, he decided, wouldn't kill him, but it might push him towards insanity.

On the third day, he woke up, took his shower and put on a fresh pair of pajamas instead of regular clothes. People with places to go wore regular clothes. Peter couldn't leave the front porch, so he ran a towel through his hair and fell backwards on his bed, planning to spend the rest of the day right there as he watched the ceiling fan.

It spun round and round and round without ever going anywhere. Just like Peter. Just like his thoughts.

He sat up when his door creaked open.

Morgan Stark, with brown, curly setting wild on her head, and a confidence only expected out of a child who had both Tony Stark and Pepper Potts for parents, bounced into his room without an invitation. She sat on the floor, in front of his bed, and started to lay out her crayons and the book coloring she had brought with her.

"Morgan… what are you doing?"

"Daddy says you're watching me now."

"Oh really?" asked Peter. "And where did he go?"

"Down in his workshop," she told him. "He's working on something super-secret."

Peter fell backwards on his bed again. Leave it to Tony to turn his detainee into his personal, on-demand babysitter.

Morgan pulled on the end of his pajama leg. "Can we go to the living room? It's almost time to turn on Moana."

Minutes later Peter sat on the floor by the coffee table, in the middle of the day, coloring a picture of an evil crab and humming along with Moana as she sang about the great unknown. Morgan was sitting next to him, leaning over the table, sometimes transfixed by the TV, and sometimes wholly concentrated on her coloring.

Once the movie was finished, and Tony was still in the workshop and refused to come back up, Peter let Morgan restart Moana from the beginning. He wasn't too sad about it. They ditched coloring and moved on to Lego's.

Morgan had enough of them to build castles and kingdoms, but instead, they built the ocean out of blocks. They forgot the world, and for a few flickering seconds, Peter forgot he was miserable.

"The ocean is better than rivers, know why?" asked Morgan. She clicked a block into place, and it completed one of their waves.

"No why?"

"There's no flesh-eating bacteria in the ocean."

Peter could think of another reason. The ocean was big and filled with mysteries. Rivers were shallow and narrow and filled with nothing that couldn't be seen just by looking at them.

He dropped the dark blue Lego in his hand, and prided, as gently as he could, the tracker on his ankle. If he could just have space between it and his skin, if it was just a bit looser, maybe he could learn to live with it being there for the next three months.

"Ripping that off your ankle is the same as stepping outside your boundaries," said Tony. Peter's head snapped up, only slightly startled by his sudden appearance in the family room. "It'll set off an alarm."

"It's too tight," said Peter. His voice was a pathetic whine that immediately pulled at Tony's sympathies.

Peter could tell, could see it in his eyes, and he didn't waste any time scrambling up off the floor and to the couch when Tony directed him to do so. He sat down on the coffee table across from Peter, who propped his foot up in Tony's lap so he could get a good look at it. Tony went to work on it, and in a few seconds, the tracker became loose, away from his skin, and Peter let out a breath.

"Better?"

"Yes," said Peter.

Peter withdrew his foot and sunk deeper into the couch, savoring the feeling of being freed, until he got greedy. He stared at Tony, curious, and as the man stared at him back from his place on the coffee table, Peter sat up a little bit straighter to frame his next question.

"If you can loosen it without triggering the alarm, couldn't you take it off too?"

"No."

"But you- "

"I can," said Tony. "But I'm not going to."

He used a tone Peter knew better than to argue with, so although he had lots of arguments and lots of reasons why his three months would be so much better without the tracker separating him from outside, he stayed quiet. He watched as Tony stood up and looked down at his daughter.

"Alright, mighty Morgan," he said. "Ready for a walk?"

"Yes!" She jumped up, dropped the Lego in her hand down on the table, and looked at Peter. "Are you coming with us, bubby?"

Peter gave Tony a look, hopeful he might change his mind for Morgan, but even her charms couldn't save him from his bleak fate.

"Not this time," Tony answered for him. "Peter's going to stay here and accept the consequences of his decisions without whining or complaining or trying to talk his way out of it."

"That doesn't sound like something I would do."

Tony gave him a funny look, grabbed Morgan's tiny hand, and the two of them walked out of the room. Seconds later he heard the front door open, then shut, signifying to Peter that he was, once again, alone.

He thought about calling May, wondered if she and Happy knew about his situation, but ultimately, decided against it. Let her enjoy her vacation without worrying about him and how much he screwed up.

The credits for Moana began to roll, he stopped them, then for the third time, started the movie from the beginning. It had a nice soundtrack. Perfect to doze off to.

* * *

Peter was already awake from his nap by the time Tony and Morgan came back from their walk.

He browsed the Stark's unlimited movie digital movie collection when Morgan zipped into the family room, declared Peter was watching her while Tony made them dinner, and threw herself back in front of the block ocean. She studied their progress, then looked back up at Peter.

"Daddy says you're in timeout," she said. "But wanna know a secret?"

"Of course," said Peter.

"If you cry sometimes he'll let you up before the timer runs out," she told him. "Only if Mommy isn't around, though."

Peter allowed a smile as he clicked, with the remote, one of Morgan's favorite TV shows. It was just like Tony to be persuaded by a few tears and a sad face, but he didn't think that would work for him. He was too old to cry, and even if he did, he was too old for Tony to care about it.

Maybe just asking again, though. Maybe persistence was the grown-up version of crying to get his own way.

As he rejoined Morgan in their attempt to build the entire ocean, Peter desperately tried to cling to his misery. It was fading into something like relaxation, and he was starting to feel content to spend his days like this. He couldn't let himself feel that way. Not all the way, or else he'd have to admit the same person who was providing him with comfort was the same person hurting him.

The smell of whatever Italian dish Tony was cooking up in the kitchen waffled into the family room, and that made his struggle to stay miserable harder. He resolved to let himself be content, to let the dread fall away, if, and only if, he could convince Tony to let him have the minimal freedom being without the monitor would provide.

Dinner was eaten quickly, it was the best lasagna Peter ever had, and Tony, remembering his metabolism, had made enough for him to have three servings. Peter stuck around in the kitchen when they were done, helping Tony clear the table and rinse off the dishes so they could be put in the dishwasher.

It was his moment, his second opportunity at persuading Tony, but it was crushed before Peter even had a chance to speak it out loud.

"The answer is no, Peter," said Tony. He could the last rinsed off plate from Peter's hand, placed it in the dish washer and shut its door.

"You don't trust me."

"No I don't," said Tony, without missing a beat. He cringed at his own words after they left his words, as if he were kicking himself for admitting the truth out loud.

Peter wasn't surprised. It was the only explanation that made sense. He wasn't trusted to stay at Tony's without the tracker anchoring him there by law, or else he'd taken it off without blinking.

"I didn't mean it like that. You know I trust you, Pete. Trust… it's the wrong word." Tony shuffled his feet around a bit, looked up at the ceiling, then back at Peter. "You just… can't handle it. You and I both know that if that comes off your ankle, you're gonna run, and if you run, and SHIELD finds you or finds you've left, which we both know they eventually would, they'll put you somewhere else. Somewhere less accommodating, so it stays on. For both our good."

Peter opened his mouth several times to correct to Tony, to tell him that he wouldn't run. He would stay. He would just be able to go outside and walk around the property, but he couldn't. He couldn't even lie to himself. Instead, he sat down at the kitchen table and looked at his hands.

He didn't have anything to say that would add value to his argument, so he kept his mouth shut.

"I know this is hard for you," said Tony. "Just… think of it as a good opportunity for you and Morgan to bond. You know, you two will be running Stark Industries together someday, if that's what she decides."

So Tony hadn't been avoiding talking about MIT to keep the peace. He hadn't been talking about it because he'd already made up his mind, without Peter, and considered it a close matter.

Peter would go to MIT. Peter would be tasked with running Stark Industries. Choices were something only offered to Tony's biological kids.

"I'm going to bed now," said Peter. Even he heard the dead, zombie-like quality to his voice. The legs of the chair he sat in scrapped across the floor, and he strode out from the kitchen, ignoring any remark Tony had to say about it being too early.

Peter paused at the door of his bedroom. Once it had been like a sanctuary. It was where he'd spent months of his life recovering from becoming dust and being zapped into the soul stone. His nightmares were the worst part, but he had his aunt and he had Tony, and they both took turns staying up with him.

They made everything okay, back then.

And despite the terror of waking up, thinking his body was disappearing, he missed that time in his life. Late at night, trembling in Tony's arms, was when he stopped being Mr. Stark became Tony, when he stopped being his mentor became his father. Back then, he was too young to know what the consequences of that was, and how much they weighed.

* * *

A/N: I meant to get this posted sooner, so thanks for having patience! Thanks to everyone reviewing and following this story! You guys are the BEST!


	4. Chapter 4

Morgan Stark, Peter learned, was an opportunist, and as an opportunist, was the only person alive benefitting from Peter's captivity. She found her best friend, her new favorite playmate, in her big brother. Peter didn't mind his misery being her happiness. Playing with Morgan became the best part of his days, the parts when time actually moved forward, and he wasn't left alone to dwell with agitation and dread.

It was impossible for him to feel either with a literal ray of sunshine smiling at him.

They played with Legos. Every day more and more blue blocks were added to their ocean, until it began to take over the family room and Tony made the mistake of suggesting that it might be time to start dismantling it. Seconds later a Lego bounced off his forehead. He had to give Morgan a talk about using her words instead of her hands while Peter tried with minimal effort not to smile or laugh.

Tony hadn't been serious, anyway. After his short discussion about not throwing objects when angry, Peter overheard him on the phone in the other room, telling Pepper to bring more crates of blue Legos home with her.

They watched movies, and they colored. Every picture Morgan drew, or even scribbled on, was declared a work art. She never noticed, but Tony collected her art like he used to collect old cars.

In the evenings, before dinner, they would sit on the porch while Peter read her stories from her books. After a couple of evenings, Peter started teaching her how to read. She was a little young, but she was a Stark and she was incredibly intelligent, and Peter wasn't even surprised when she sounded out her first word.

They were fast friends, and in that, Tony had gotten what he wanted. Peter couldn't think of a better way to spend his time while under house arrest, but that was partly because while him and Morgan were becoming buddies, him and Tony were becoming the opposite.

Peter left rooms when Tony entered them. He didn't talk to him, afraid his resentment and his anger might leave his mouth if he did, and when he absolutely had to reply, his replies were short, one-word responses, stated in a dead zombie voice.

It didn't start intentional. He hadn't been trying to make stabs at Tony, until he watched as the man went from confused, to hurt, and then finally, to directing the ice right back at Peter. He wasn't proud of it, but the contest, the challenge to see who would break down and start screaming at the other first, felt good. Felt empowering in a time when Peter had no power.

Their mutual freeze out made dinners awkward. Morgan rambled, and they listened to her, talked to her, but not to each other. When it was quiet, and Morgan was too busy eating to tell stories, Tony stared him down as if he was capable of cracking him with a single stare. Maybe when he was younger that would work, but not now.

Peter gripped his fork and didn't say a word.

Neither of them broke until a few days later, when Pepper arrived home with the promised Legos, and Peter made a move for the stairs when it was time to eat. He could survive a solo meal, with just Tony, one-on-one. He wasn't so sure he'd be as lucky being double-teamed.

He was half way up when Tony stopped him.

"Dinner," he told him, from the bottom of the stairs. "Isn't optional."

Peter clinched his jaw, wondered how he was expected to make decisions like an adult, but still got ordered around like a sulky teenager. He did as he was told, anyway, and took his seat at the dinner table next to Morgan.

It was icy silence, just like the dinners before it, except this time Pepper was there to witness. Her eyes shifted from Tony to Peter, from Tony to Peter, as the former aggressively cut at his steak and the latter pushed vegetables around on the plate with his fork.

"Okay," said Pepper. She took the napkin off her lap and tossed it on the table. "What's going on?"

"Dinner," said Tony. "We're all eating together like one big happy family, right Pete?"

"Uh huh," said Peter. He stabbed a piece of broccoli with his fork.

Pepper closed her eyes, exhaled, then opened them, looking between them again. "Alright, let's try again. Peter, when are you going back to school?"

He shifted around in his chair. The question was too loaded not to be asked with the intention of uncovering the source of all the conflict, which was also the very topic he'd been imprisoned in this house. Probably, Pepper knew that, knew before Tony did, after only being home for less than an hour.

Her timing was excellent. After the last couple of days, Peter didn't have any restraint left.

"I'm not."

Tony let the fork go slack in his hand, then narrowed his eyes in at him. "You can't take anything he says seriously right now, Pep. He's just throwing a tantrum because I won't let him skip out on house arrest."

Tony left the fork go slack in his hands, then narrowed his eyes at him. "You can't take anything he says seriously right now, Pep. He's just throwing a fit because I won't let him skip out on house arrest."

"What? No… that's not – I'm not going back."

"Yes you are."

He was dismissive. He wasn't even looking at him, or hearing him, and Peter's heartbeat kicked up a couple of notches. He could hear, and feel, it pounded away behind his ears. He gripped the edge of the table with his free hand, to steady himself, so he wouldn't go flying into through the ceiling and into the atmosphere.

"No I'm not. It's my life."

"And you're my son," said Tony, his voice, suddenly, was firm, louder and scarier. He looked up from his plated, looked right at him, but the eye contact didn't make him feel seen. Just attacked. Backed into a corner. Powerless.

"Funny I don't remember you signing any adoption papers."

Tony gave him a long, silent stare. No one spoke, or ate, not even Morgan.

"I think naming you as my heir in my will makes it perfectly clear," said Tony. His voice lost its volume, but somehow, it was still just as dangerous. "You're my son, in all the ways that actually matter, and you're going to straighten up and drop that attitude and get your ass back in school – "

"-Tony, maybe we should discuss – "

"-There's nothing left to discuss. It's settled."

Peter let go of the table, leaned back in his chair and dropped his fork. He was done with dinner, done with being forced to do things he didn't want to do, and most importantly, done with Tony.

"I don't want to be your son," said Peter, and he saw the progression in Tony's eyes again, from confused, to hurt, then back to redirecting Peter's own anger. "Nobody ever asked me. Nobody ever asks me what I actually want."

He stood up, the back legs of the chair scrapped against the floor and threw his napkin over his uneaten food. He left the kitchen, leaving misery behind him, but also, taking some for himself, too.

Peter felt empty as he marched up the stairs, this time, making it all the way to the top. He was hollowed out as his knees buckled, and he collapsed on his bed, stuffing his face between his pillows. He was too old to cry, but the tears came anyway, with the realization that being heard meant he'd never get that hug, or that guidance, ever again.

At least not from Tony.

He hugged his blanket close and cried into his pillow until sleep came for him.

* * *

Peter ran, tore through grey hallways, that were narrow, wielding and never ending. They stretched on forever, how matter how fast he tried to get his legs to move, and no matter how hard he searched for doors, he found none. He ran, but he was going nowhere.

He stopped, looked around, as if he expected to see something different. There wasn't anything. Everything was the same.

Peter tried to move on, but he couldn't move his leg. There was a weight around his ankle, gluing him to the spot where he stood. He looked down. Whatever it was keeping him stationary was invisible.

"Peter?"

His head snapped up and his eyes went wide when he saw Aunt May.

"I told you to run."

May blinked, then looked away from him, held up her hand and watched as it crumbled into dust.

"Peter… I love you, so much."

"No… no don't go!"

He tried to dive to her, to get close enough to grab the hand that hadn't yet disappeared, but the invisible binds on his ankle would not let him move. All he could do was watch, with anguish and tears, as the rest of May turned into a pile of dust.

Peter screamed, and tried to move, until he wasn't standing anymore. He was lying down, twisting around on his bed and under his comforter. The weight on his ankle turned into a weight on his shoulder. Tony's hand pressed down on it, and Peter's own hands clutched Tony's forearm.

They locked eyes, Peter's terror was washed out by relief, and his final scream fall short.

"Easy kid," said Tony. "Just a nightmare."

He breathed hard, shook and wasn't able to say anything. Feelings of grief for May hung around even with the dream gone, even now that he knew it wasn't real. He kept his desperate grip on Tony's forearm, sure that if he let go, he would slip back into his nightmare.

"May… she turned to dust. I – I couldn't do anything."

Tony's eye brows knitted together, and he frowned. "Fresh air?"

Peter nodded and let Tony pull him out of bed and guide him across his bedroom towards the sliding glass door that led to the balcony. Tony grabbed a throw blanket from the couch as they walked by and draped it across Peter's shoulders. FRIDAY slid open the door, and they were met with a breeze as they crossed over the threshold.

The view from the balcony was pretty great. Just wilderness and treetops for miles. He could hear for miles, too. The breeze rippling through the trees, the water rushing through a nearby stream, and when he strained, the ocean, crashing against the shore.

It was exactly what he needed to wash his brain of the nightmare juices, to wake up further into reality, and Tony knew that. He knew better than anyone, except maybe May, how to help him after his nightmares. And Peter had rejected him, told him he didn't want to be his son and walked away.

He swallowed the lump in his throat.

"I'm sorry."

"No," said Tony. "No, you don't get to beat me to apologizing this time. I… I had this whole speech planned out, and now you've ruined it."

Peter blinked at him, pulled the blanket closer to his arms, and wondered if he should start stammering out an apology for ruining his initial apology. His panicked thoughts didn't matter, though. Tony started talking again before Peter could get out another word.

"I sounded like an ass hat tonight, huh?" asked Tony. He walked forward and joined Peter at the railing. "You know my father used to say things like 'straighten up' and 'lose the attitude' and I promised myself if I ever had kids… that wouldn't be me. I wouldn't say those things to my kids…"

Tony trailed off, and his voice was replaced by a few crickets chirping down below, until the quiet became uncomfortable and he continued his speech.

"I'm sorry, Pete. I tried to be better than him, for you, but it's pretty obvious I've been failing. I've been… incredibly blind, and I haven't made you feel like you could talk to me. You can, you know, you can tell me anything, even if it's something you think I don't want to hear."

Peter paused to hear the crickets again and tried to piece together by he went from arguing with Tony, to having a nightmare, then finally, to standing on the balcony, having to explain to Tony that he was the one causing most of his problems.

"Just lay it on me, Pete," said Tony. "Whatever it is I can handle it. I'm a big boy."

He took a breath and remembered May's words from years and years ago. Maybe she was right. Maybe he would feel so much better after they talked.

"I… I don't want to go back to school," said Peter. "It's too much…"

"Pressure?"

"Yeah, and if I'm not going to school for you and Pepper, and off somewhere with the Avengers, with Fury or the drill sergeant screaming orders in my ear," said Peter. "I didn't sign up to be a CEO, or a soldier, but that doesn't matter because I don't get a say in anything. I'm not even my own person anymore."

"I didn't know you felt that way."

"I… never said anything."

Peter looked away, back at the trees. He didn't want to see the effect his words had on Tony, so he didn't see him closing the distance between them, just felt his arm as it was slung over his shoulders, over the blanket Peter wore like a cape.

"I'm gonna fix it," said Tony. "We'll figure out a solution for this mess. I promise, I'll make it up to you."

Peter, despite logic, dared to believe him. That one day he'd wake up, and the entire world wouldn't be on his shoulders. He already felt a little better. May's wisdom, apparently, transcended visits to the dentist. It really did feel better on the other side of the dreaded event.

They went back to Peter's room and turned on a movie. Tony knew, better than almost anyone, that he didn't sleep after nightmares, or usually didn't. He was passed out on the couch before the movie finished its opening credits.

* * *

A/N: Just 3 more chapters left, guys! Thanks so much for everyone reviewing and leaving your lovely comments. I never expected this story to get much of a response at all, so I'm so thankful that I've been getting so many. Really, it means a lot! I'm going to try to have the next chapter out by Wednesday, but I'm also about to update my other story, Good Kid, so it might be pushed to Thursday if work is busy.


	5. Chapter 5

The next morning, Peter woke up natural, without an alarm, and without a knock on his door from Morgan. Sunlight pulled him from his dreams. It streamed in from the full windows and glass door that revealed the balcony, and covered his face, made him turn over and burrow his head into the couch cushions.

He wanted to stay like that forever, peaceful and relaxed, and reveling in the ceasefire between him and Tony. For the first time, in a long time, Peter was home. No dread or secrets, just an odd, probably illogical faith that somehow Tony would fix all of this for him. That he would come up with a solution that satisfied everyone.

May had been right. Everything was sunnier on the other side of the dreaded event, whether it was a dentist appointment, or an argument. He would be completely lost without her and her wisdom, and he thanked his lucky stars watching her crumble away had just been a nightmare.

Peter sat up and turned around when his door creaked open. Tony, with Morgan trotting along after him, walked into his room with a tray of food. It was piled so high with pancakes and eggs and fruits, and with bottles of juice wobbling around, Peter wondered how Tony managed getting it up the stairs without knocking anything off.

"What's all this?"

"Breakfast in bed!" Morgan leaped up on the couch where Peter laid. Her voice was both too loud for morning hours, and too loud for his Spidey senses, but he didn't care. He smiled at her anyway. "Daddy made chocolate chip pancakes!"

Tony set the tray down on the coffee table, carefully, and began sorting through a stack of silverware. Peter realized, as he saw three plates, that they were all eating breakfast with him.

"We always have chocolate chip pancakes after bad dreams," said Morgan. She fell into a sitting position near Peter's feet.

"It's tradition," said Tony, as he handed Peter one of the plates. He accepted it and wondered who had more nightmares, Morgan or Tony, and he decided it was probably the latter.

Breakfast took the opposite tone as the dinner that proceeded it. Laughs were easy. Conversations were light and shared between the three of them. The only time Peter even thought about the tension that had existed just hours earlier was when he asked about Pepper, why she wasn't eating with them and Tony explained she usually sleeps in late her first day being back at home.

Stark Industries really took it out of her, and she needed the rest.

"But tomorrow we'll spend the whole day together," Morgan told him. Her eyes were happy, but it was still obvious that Morgan missed her mom. She needed her full time, or at least more often, and by refusing to go to school and by doing so, refusing his inheritance, Peter was the one keeping them apart.

Tony took care of cleaning up, putting dirty dishes back on the tray, and instructing Morgan to grab the cups, while Peter watched, detached. Maybe he was selfish. Maybe the news commentators were right, and he was just like Tony at age twenty-one. Tony stopped at the bedroom door, looked at Peter and ordered him to get dressed.

"I am dressed."

"In real clothes."

"Wha – "

"We're going out," said Tony. He didn't elaborate and left the room before Peter could ask any questions.

Peter forgot his guilt and exchanged his pajamas for real clothes in a hurry. His mind ran wild with the possibility that Tony might take his ankle monitor off, and he would be able to enjoy a minimal amount of freedom. Once dressed, he ran down the stairs. The last one caught him by surprised, and he tripped, fell face first on the hard wood floor at the bottom.

"I forgot how graceful you were," said Tony. Peter followed his shoes, to his legs, to his face, which was dripping with sarcasm. He swung the front door open. Morgan ran outside leaving both of the in the foyer and leaving Tony to shout at her to slow down.

Outside was beautiful. It wasn't too, or too cold, and the clouds in the sky were useful for blocking out glares from the sun. Peter took a seat on the porch and looked at Tony expectedly, waiting for him to remove the ankle bracelet. Instead, Tony just looked back at him as if he were stupid.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm waiting for you to take this – "

"I already told you I'm not taking it off."

"But I thought – you said… !"

"I don't have to take it off," said Tony. He pulled something small from his pocket and held it up between two fingers. It looked like a flash drive, but Peter knew Tony well enough to know it was probably more than that. "This will jam the signal. Makes it look like you're where you should be, as long as you're within a half of mile from this."

Peter stood up, stared at the miraculous device that could grant him freedom, and without giving Tony much warning, attempted to snatch it from his hands. Tony simply stepped off the porch, effectively dodging Peter's hand and effectively causing him to lose his balance. Tony steadied him with one hand and used the other to shove the signal jammer back in his pocket.

"I'm gonna hold onto it."

Peter released a breath. It wasn't complete freedom. It was freedom half-way, and it felt cheap. Technically, he was still somebody's prisoner.

"So I'm like a dog on a leash?"

Tony let out a laugh, stopped short when he saw Peter was serious. "Don't think about it like that. Just… come on."

He didn't move, considering, just momentarily, refusing to accompany them on their walk, but behind Tony, Morgan was making faces at him. She might explode with frustration if he held them up any longer, and he supposed if there was anyone he could shelf his pettiness for, it was her.

As Peter walked with his family towards the trees, he couldn't completely blame Tony. He knew he couldn't be trusted, knew Tony was just doing what he always did, protecting him from himself. Besides, he still got to leave the house, and he still walking on a peaceful path through the woods, with his boundaries nowhere in sight, getting to witness Tony's multiple heart attacks every time Morgan ran too far ahead of them.

"Maybe you should put her on a leash, too," said Peter.

Tony mumbled something about Pepper and a disagreement under his breath, as they walked out of the path and met a stream. They decided to stop, let Morgan run around and play, while they talked. The talking had been Tony's idea, and it made Peter tense up, thinking the creation of a signal jammer had been just a way of buttering him up before dropping it on him that the expectations were still the same. That he would be returning to MIT next semester.

Tony opened his mouth, Peter braced himself to hear the thing he didn't want to hear but saw Tony's eyes narrow in on something behind him.

"Morgan Stark," said Tony. "Get that foot back on the ground and away from that water."

Peter turned his head, saw Morgan had one foot planted on the dirt and the other hovering above the stream. She quickly withdrew it at Tony's voice.

"But I can see the bottom."

"Flesh eating bacteria doesn't care if you can see the bottom."

"Aww dad, you're just like Chief Tui." She pouted, picked up a rock from the ground and threw it in the water, displaying her anger in a way that only splashed herself. She backed away, opting to attempt climbing a nearby tree instead.

"I don't know what I'm going to do with her," said Tony, his eyes linger on his daughter a couple of extra seconds. "She's fascinated by water."

"Teach her to swim?"

"She _knows_ how to swim," said Tony. He looked at Peter. "So, listen. I think I've figured out how to solve your problem with the Avengers."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. Fuck the Avengers, and fuck Nick Fury."

"What?"

"Well, the way I see it is you have a choice to make," said Tony. "You can be an Avenger, or you can be friendly neighborhood Spider-Man."

Peter stared off at the water flowing through the stream. It sounded like such a simple solution when Tony broke it down like that. The new Accords were for the Avengers, and only the Avengers. There weren't any laws that stated being a mutant meant he had to be an Avenger, or even registered, at least not yet. If he wasn't an Avenger, being Spider-Man wouldn't technically be breaking the law, or at least, any laws under Fury's jurisdiction

He could be a vigilante without having to spend months detained at Tony's house because of it.

"The new Accords were formed to sooth the public, to make them comfortable with the idea of superheroes without having to get government permission every time an intervention was necessary. They're temporary," said Tony. "Losing his best player might motivate Fury to put pressure on congress to do away with the Accords altogether."

It was a good plan, a risky one, but one that Peter could see working. But if it didn't? Was he ready to walk away from the Avengers completely? Peter wasn't so sure. He dreamed about since he was a little kid. Before he even met Tony or got his powers.

"That's a big gamble," said Peter.

"Not really. You're already miserable. At the very worst, Fury calls your bluff and you don't have to listen to sergeant metal arm anymore."

Peter laughed at the nickname, but quietly felt ripped-off. There was no mention of the first problem, the MIT problem, and that left Peter to assume Tony's stance on it hadn't changed, that he was willing to give him permission to be a rogue as long as it meant he stayed inside the lines he'd drawn for him. That felt wrong, at first.

Then Tony smiled, and ruffled his hair, like he used to do when Peter was seventeen and didn't have the entire future on his shoulders. Peter could sacrifice being an Avenger to be the heir of Stark Industries. He could run a company. He could do all of this so Morgan had the chance to have a whole family, instead of a broken one.

When they finally decided to walk back to the house, Morgan looked up at her dad, then at Peter.

"I'm tired," she said. She lifted up her hands towards Peter. "Will you carry me?"

Peter lifted her up, and they weren't even five minutes into their trek back home when she fell asleep, her face resting on his shoulder. Morgan was so light, so fragile, that he felt like a gust of wind could break her. He wondered if that was how Tony felt all the time, like he was just one gusty day away from losing both his kids.

* * *

A/N: Soooooo... last chapter I said this had 3 chapters left, but now it really has three chapters left. I had to break up this chunk of writing and make it it's own chapter. I think the story will make more sense that way, even though it makes this one a bit short. Anyway, thanks so much for reading and I hope you're enjoying it!


	6. Chapter 6

Nightmares came for Peter every night.

Always the same one. Always his Aunt May, crumpling into a pile of dust, while he stood by, helpless and watching as his last relative blew away with the wind. Disappear into nothing, like she had never really been there at all.

Tony woke him up, always, and seeing his face crinkled with concern like that, hovering over him in the darkness of his bedroom, Peter wondered if his nightmares gave him a tiny glimpse of what Tony felt when he had faded away into ashes. The nightmares left Peter with horrible feelings, even hours after, and he couldn't begin to imagine what it'd be like living it as a reality.

The more the dreams came, however, the more he started to believe maybe they were true, or would become true, like his brain was trying to tell him something he already knew.

It was a windy day when Peter confessed this fear to Tony. They had walked all the way to the ocean. The breeze carried salt with it and the sound of waves crashing against the shore filled their ears. They stood, side by side, watching as Morgan ran up and down the beach, where the tide threatened to hit patches of dry sand.

"They're just dreams, Pete," Tony told him.

Usually Peter found at least some comfort in Tony's reassurances. Not this time. Something was wrong.

Something was wrong, and Peter couldn't remember what it was. There was still a big black spot in his memory, one he once blamed on Nick Fury slipping him drugs, but now was beginning to fear it was something more. He wrecked his brain, willed himself to remember, but failed each time.

It was haunting and maddening, but he didn't bring it up to Tony again.

Tony was probably right about them just being dreams, even if Peter didn't feel that he was, and that was a part of him that wanted to ignore the foreboding feeling of dread. To push it away and forget about it, to make room to fully enjoy time with his family.

Peter was one week into a three-month sentence, but with him and Tony getting along, with Tony allowing him small amounts of freedoms in the form of walks to the beach, he felt like time was flying by. He could get used to this, enjoy it even, until he was allowed back out into the real world.

He liked their routine. He liked eating homecooked dinners at the table in the dining room and watching cartoons with Morgan. He missed being part of a family. It meant he wasn't alone. That's what he felt in his bedroom at the Avenger's Compound and in his college dorm. Alone. Without anyone to wake him up from his nightmares and make him chocolate pancakes.

One of his favorite parts about their routine was the workshop. In the evenings, after Tony put Morgan to bed, they disappeared down there for hours at a time. It wasn't like when Peter was a teenager. Back then there were elements and tools Peter wasn't even allowed to look at from across the room. Now Tony let Peter work without restriction, let him build and invent whatever he wanted, while he supervised from his desk.

Peter built weapons. He made brand new web-shooters, since Fury had confiscated his other ones with his suit, and Tony showed him how he could make the triggers release faster. Tony taught him a lot of stuff, taught him to work wires and tech in ways Peter never dreamed possible, and yet, even with Tony's help, his builds never came anywhere near to measuring up to Tony's genius.

Tony complimented them, but it felt like the way Peter complimented Morgan's crayon drawings. He thought they were cute. Just like how Peter's efforts in the workshop were probably just cute in Tony's eyes.

But he could deal with the condescending praise if it meant being in the workshop. It wasn't all about the tech. He was getting something he hadn't realized he missed. Time with Tony. Time to just talk about things that wasn't school or the Avengers or tangled up with anything Peter deemed stressful.

It was nice. That should have been the first warning sign that it was about to be ruined. Parkers, and maybe even Starks, didn't get to have nice things.

They were laughing, joking around. Peter dodged Tony's hand when it went to ruffle his hair, and when the laughing died down, Peter mentioned May, wondered out loud if she and Happy were back from their cruise. He hadn't heard from her either way, and until Tony started laughing, Peter hadn't stopped to think that was strange.

"What? Why is that funny?" he asked Tony, but there was a sinking feeling in his stomach. Somehow, he already knew.

"Happy doesn't go on cruises," said Tony. "He gets seasick. It's pathetic, actually."

"Well he went on one with May."

"Kid, the only way Happy would say he was on a cruise is if he was trying to tell me he had a gun pointed at his head."

Something rattled in Peter's mind. Threads unraveled and untangled and his breath caught as he was thrown back into nightmares. They were real, or parts of them were, and that meant Tony had been wrong. Peter didn't want to live in a world where his hero, his father, could be wrong. He didn't want to live in a world that didn't have May.

His memories returning were like flashes of lightening. Short, but bright. They were puzzles pieces dumped out of a box that he had to sort through and piece back together. Even jumbled, he didn't like the bleak picture they created.

He remembered a warehouse, and grey hallways with grey walls, and screaming that somehow wasn't louder the heartbeats he followed. He remembered the room where he found his aunt chained to the wall, where Happy was knocked out next to her. She had yelled at Peter to run. His legs wouldn't move. A needle had stabbed him in the neck, and at the next flash of lightening, he had been falling into his apartment. He had been staring up at Nick Fury's shoes.

Fury, who was making him stay here, preventing him from saving his May and Tony's Happy, preventing him from remembering that they needed saving, and now that he did, it was probably too late. His eyes snapped to the work station. Under Tony's hands, near where he was working, the signal jammer lay unattended, within Peter's grasp.

He snatched it, and this time, he ran. Up the stairs, through the house, out the door and into the windy night. He jumped the last few steps of the porch, tore through the yard, and plowed right into something rock solid. Iron Man.

"Dammit, Peter!"

He turned his head back, the wind blowing his hair in wild directions as he did, and saw Tony, standing behind him, near the porch. He looked back at the empty shell, the brainless armor standing in front of him, trying to block him. Peter could get past it. Without Tony inside, it didn't stand a chance.

"Get your ass back in this house. Right. Now." Tony's voice was furious, but if he only knew, if Peter could find the words to explain to him what was happening, what had probably already happened, maybe he could understand. "What are you gonna do? Run all the way to Queens? Hitchhike across the country? Cause if you're thinking of going home, forget it. They'll find you, and then where will you be?"

Somewhere worse. Somewhere by himself, where there was nobody to wake him up from his nightmares and make him chocolate chip pancakes.

Peter looked past the Iron Man armor, into the trees that seemed to stretch out for miles and miles. The risk would be for nothing. Peter wasn't getting back to Queens by foot. He shut his eyes tight, forcing crushing tears before they fell, then turned back. He suppressed a sob for each step back to his prison, and when he returned to Tony, he dropped the signal jammer in his open and waiting palm, then threw himself on the bottom step of the porch.

He buried his head in his own hands, and he couldn't hold the tears back any longer.

"What," said Tony. There was still an edge in his voice, but it was softer, less sharp. "Is going on?"

Peter looked up at Tony with his teary eye, and he stared back with the same concern that woke him up from his nightmares. He explained to Tony, as best as he could, that it wasn't Fury that drugged him, that it was someone he couldn't remember and someone, for some reason, who had stolen his aunt and Happy. To Peter's relief, Tony listened. He did more than that. He believed him.

"I'm gonna call Rhodey," he said. "He'll fix this."

If it could be fixed went unsaid. If they weren't too late. If Peter hadn't spent a week arguing with Tony then walking around beaches would he should have been focusing on recovering his memories.

Peter sat in place, ran his hand through his hair, and listened to the rings on the other side of Tony's phone call. He didn't answer. Tony dialed again, but Peter knew it would earn the same result and he knew he had to do something. He couldn't just sit around in a cabin when May and Happy were out there in trouble.

Or worse. Dead.

He wiped the tears from his eyes with his sleeve and stood up. "You have to let me go."

Tony took his phone from his ear. "Peter…"

"We can't just leave them there to die," said Peter. "Or leave their bodies there if – "

"-kid… don't say that."

"It might be true," said Peter. The earth shifted when he acknowledged, out loud, that May and Happy might be dead. He willed his feet to stay on earth. He had to keep it together. At least until they knew for sure. "Please, I… can't lose her, too."

Resignation flashed across Tony's face. He took a deep breath, held it, then let it go. "Okay. But you come straight back. Get May and Happy, then straight back here, got it?"

Peter nodded, quick and sloppy and relieved, despite the unknown that stretched in front of him. This was better than waiting for bad news. This was the ability to take action. It wasn't until Tony took the ankle tracker off him that Peter realized he still had the same issue as before. He didn't have any way of getting back into the city, at least not anything as fast as he needed.

"Got any jets hidden anywhere?" asked Peter.

"No," said Tony. He titled his head, and when Peter followed it, he saw the empty Iron Man suit still standing in the yard. "But I've got one of those."

"You can't be serious. I can't – "

"You can, and you will, because you have to," said Tony. He put a hand on Peter's shoulder. "I wouldn't be letting you go if I didn't know your ridiculously large hero complex won't let you live with yourself if you stay."

Peter looked at the suit. He couldn't be Iron Man. He couldn't be Tony. He couldn't take his place at Stark Industries, and he sure as hell couldn't take his place as the only man Thanos ever feared.

"Don't overthink it. It's intuitive," said Tony. "I'll program Karen into it while you're in flight, and she'll be there for you when you land and get our guys back."

He didn't know how Tony went from yelling at him to displaying the utmost confidence in him, and Peter pretended to have that same confidence, like the words 'in flight' weren't terrifying. He was used to swinging around, was used to his own methods, but blasting off into the night sky in Iron Man armor didn't seem safe or familiar or possible.

But he still pretended. Put on a brave face for Tony as he approached the armor. The man had been right. He didn't really have any other choice.

* * *

A/N:

Hey!

Just a few things.

First of all, thank you guys for all your kind words and following along with this story! It means the world.

Secondly, the next upload might take a little longer. I work in at an accounting firm, and next week in the last full week before tax day, so it's pretty busy and hectic. I'm only letting you all know because whenever a story takes forever to upload I worry it's going to be abandoned. Not this story! I'll finish it!

Thirdly, I'm changing my username on here, so the next time this is updated, it'll probably be different, but it's still me!

And last, who else is nervous about Endgame? If Tony Stark dies I'm going to be a mess all summer.


	7. Chapter 7

Tony was wrong.

His Iron Man suit wasn't intuitive. Not at first. Not to Peter.

He struggled to get off the ground, and once he did, he clawed around at the air while he hovered in place, just a few feet up from the grass. His arms and legs flailed, uselessly, as he tried to get used to being air born without his webs tethering him. He was like a cat who didn't know how to swim, or one picked up who didn't want to be.

To Tony's credit, he didn't laugh. Just offered some impressively composed instructions from the sidelines, until Peter stopped his nervous thrashing, straightened out his arms and legs, and got control over his hovering. He gained speed, and he gained some altitude, only to sputter around some more once he reached the treetops.

The problem, he supposed, was his nerves. He'd been this high before. Hell, he'd been out of the stratosphere on the outside of an alien spacecraft, but that had been different. That was as Spider-Man. That was with his web-shooters. This was foreign, and he felt like an imposter. He _was _an imposter wearing red and gold armor. He was a child playing dress-up, putting on their dad's suit, and pretending to go to work.

But he'd have to pretend. He'd have to hope pretending was enough to get to May, and save her, if she could still be saved.

That was the lump in his throat, the sick feeling in his stomach, that kept him going, even as Karen directed him to fly straight over the ocean. As he flew over and looked down, Peter saw stars down in the water, and he saw a fury in the crashing waves. The black ocean was massive, and stretched on for further than he could see, and it felt dangerous.

Nothing to catch him if he fell way out here. No one to call if he lost control of the suit and dipped down into where the stars were reflected from the sky. Peter was alone. In the sky, about the unknown. Just that one crushing fear to keep him company.

It kept him going, though, and eventually, he saw land again. He was back in Queens within minutes, back to the place where drugs and Nick Fury stopped him from completing this mission the first time.

A simple command to Karen brought directions to the warehouse, the last place he'd been as Spider-Man and Peter, not for the first time, thanked the stars Tony programmed an advanced tracking and GPS system into his suit. Without it, he might have never made it back to the warehouse. He didn't remember it. Not even when he landed at its back doors with a soft thud.

Peter took a second. He listened to his senses. He closed his eyes and let his hearing stretch out and comb his surroundings, and the result turned his stomach. Two heartbeats. One of them belonged to the man who only thought he was hidden behind a nearby dumpster, and the other, well the likelihood of it being May's was slim.

For the moment, he focused on the gun. It was stuck out from around the corner, and when a bullet bounced off his armor, Peter couldn't even bother to flinch.

With a sigh, he marched over to the dumpster, grabbed the gunman up by his shirt collar, and slammed him against the building.

"Iron Man? You're not supposed to be here," he said. "You're supposed to be dead."

"You too," said Peter. His voice sounded mechanical, but nothing like Tony's when he was talking through the suit.

He threw the man, and when he hit the ground, his skull smacked the cement. It was a clean knock out, one that allowed Peter to proceed into the warehouse.

The inside was exactly like his senses had told him. Empty. Deserted. Not a soul to be heard, except the one single heartbeat, and even that wasn't as strong as it should be. Peter approached, got closer and closer to the rhythm, his own heart beating in his ear and his throat tightening as he did. He knew it was stupid to hope it was May. He knew it probably wasn't, but hope was wild and untamed.

Hope flared up, only to burn him on the inside when he turned the corner and didn't see May. The heartbeat didn't belong to her. It belonged to Happy.

He was sprawled out on the floor. His forehead was banged and covered with dried blood, his eyes were shut and was clearly unconscious.

"Happy!"

Peter hustled towards him, and once he got by his side, dropped down to one knee and gently shook his shoulder. After some persistence, Happy grunted, struggled to sit up, but when he couldn't, settled for blinking his eyes open.

"T-tony?"

"No it's Peter," he said. With his words, the faceplate fell away, and Happy looked at him with hazy, confused eyes.

"-why are you –"

"-it's a long story," said Peter. "Where's May?"

He looked around the room, at all the empty space and dread took over again. He knew the answer, knew she wasn't around, or if she was, just her body was left. He forced out the beginning of a question he couldn't finished, thanks to the tightening of his throat.

"She's not - ?"

"She's not dead," said Happy. He struggled to sit up again, and this time, Peter offered his hand and helped maneuver him into a sitting position against the wall. "They took her."

"Where?"

They locked eyes. "It's not good, Pete. They took her overseas, to Russia, I think… with some others… it's a human trafficking ring."

Peter backed away from Happy and stood up straight. His world spun again as he tried to comprehend how far away Russia was, as he tried to push his thoughts away from all the terrible things the words human trafficking brought to his mind. He looked straight up, at the high, grey ceiling.

He knew what he had to do, and he knew he had to do it quickly.

Peter glanced at Happy. "And they just left you… here?"

"In their defense," said Happy. His voice was raspy and pained. "I think they were counting on me dying a slow, painful death."

"I'm having Karen contact emergency services, to get you help," said Peter. A simple flex of his hands brought the power back, brought him hovering into the air and ready to take off. "I'm going to go get May."

He was ready. He didn't need a plan more elaborate than the one he could come up with on his way there and was about to blast through the ceiling when Happy's raspy, ragged yell stopped him. He was suddenly loud, suddenly forceful, so much so that Peter put his feet back on the ground.

"What? You're just going to fly off to Russia in Tony's suit? You don't even know where you're going," said Happy. He paused, coughed a bit, and when he continued his voice was lower, but still brutal. "Didn't you hear me? They took more than just your aunt… one of them had a kid, and they took him, too. You're gonna carry them all back to Queens on your back?"

It was a vague memory that hit him. That night before he leaped out his apartment window and into a thunderstorm, he'd been watching the news report about disappearances in Queens. Missing people that Spider-Man didn't care about, because Spider-Man was too busy being an Avenger.

"I'll figure something out."

"You need help," said Happy. "You need a team behind you for something like this."

Peter looked up at the ceiling again. He wouldn't dare look back at Happy when he knew he was right. He needed the Quinjet, and he needed backup, and he needed the Avengers, even if he hated the idea of crawling back to them. He'd spent the last several days entertaining the idea of walking away from his team completely, and now, well he had no choice but to ask for his

He lifted himself back into the air. "I'll call you when May is safe."

Peter gave an order to Karen get an ambulance for Happy, and then flew up at the ceiling, blasted a hole in its center and sailed into the sky, dreading and anticipating the night.

* * *

Glass shards flew everywhere as Peter crashed through a window at the Avenger's compound. Not just any window. A specific window. The one to Black Widow's living quarters.

Peter figured she was his best chance. She wouldn't rat him out to Fury, at least, and that was something.

She pitied him. Because he was young. Because he would always be, in her eyes, the seventeen-year-old who followed Tony Stark into space, got caught up in a war, dusted, and brought back to life. He'd been too young for all those things. Maybe, still, he was too young for this, but for now that was just something he could use to his advantage.

The crash didn't faze Nat. She stayed sitting still at her dining room table, only her eyes moving at the sound and his sudden appearance in her living room. The man sitting next to her jumped only in his seat.

"Stark?" asked Bucky.

"Parker," corrected Nat.

The faceplate fell away. "How did you know?"

"You're taller."

"Wait, really?" asked Peter. He'd never noticed and wondered when that had happened. It didn't really matter. Tony would always be larger than life. At least to Peter.

"And you're an idiot for coming here," she continued. "If anyone sees you, they'll put you somewhere with high security."

"Good thing no one's going to find out, then," said Peter. He looked at Bucky. Pointedly. Daring him to call Fury or some SHIELD agents and tattle on him. He didn't, though. Just glared back at him, until Peter continued. "Anyway, I had no choice. I, uh, have a mission for you guys. For us."

"A mission?"

"Don't get excited," said Nat. "It's just his way of asking us for help."

"Look," said Peter. He took a step forward, then a deep breath, to mask how frustrated it made him that he was so easily read, so incredibly transparent in a room with a spy and ex assassin. "My aunt's been… kidnapped. Some human trafficking ring. In Russia. I just… I can't lose her. Not her, too."

The room got quiet. Peter looked down at his feet, still surprised to see himself covered in the red and gold armor and listened to the hum of the air conditioner while Nat and Bucky silently deliberated. Peter thought it might take several minutes and his head snapped up in surprise when he got his answer quickly.

"Let's go get the jet," said Nat. She stood from her chair and wasn't far behind her.

"Yeah, we should leave right away," said Bucky, and by the time the words left his mouth, the two of them were already by the door. Nat disappeared into the hall, but Bucky paused when he saw Peter, still standing in the middle of the room. "Coming, Parker?"

"Y-yeah," said Peter. He shook himself out of his trance and followed Bucky out into the hallway, snapping his faceplate back into place as he did.

It was distressing. How quickly they jumped up to help him, especially when it was paired with how quickly Peter let Tony talk him into abandoning them and how all Peter could think about was not letting their helpfulness deter him for Tony's plan for him to defect from the Avengers.

He still wanted to be friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. He still just wanted to be free.

When they turned the corner all the way to launch pad, Peter figured it didn't matter much, anyway. Their mission to help May and the others smuggled into Russia was over before the Quinjet even left the ground, or at least Peter's part in it was. Nick Fury stood in the hallway they entered, staring at them and wearing a frown.

* * *

A/N: So I finally got back with another chapter! I hope you enjoyed and I hope you all aren't dying with anxiety over Endgame like I am! and thanks for all your reviews and being patient with this story!


	8. Chapter 8

Peter stared at Nick Fury, wide-eyed, and thankful his expression was hidden underneath Iron Man's armor. The disguise was better than anything he could've asked for. It disguised his body language, if he stayed perfectly still, his face, and most importantly, his voice.

He whispered a command to Karen, ordering her to initiate the voice changer, to make his voice mimic Tony's, while Bucky pretended to lose his balance and collide into Nat. Her annoyed shout, her shove at his side, was enough to cover Peter's hushed instructions to his AI.

The three of them made a good team, and when they wanted to, were able to communicate without words or even gestures. Peter wished this wasn't true. It'd be a lot easier to walk away from them if they didn't work together so nicely.

Fury's eyes went back and forth between the three of them, before settling on Peter. "Stark? What are you doing here? You're supposed to be babysitting."

"Oh, well," said Peter. He frowned at the way his voice sounded exactly like Tony's and tried to channel his vocabulary. "Pep's taking care of Morgan."

"I meant Parker," said Fury. "Who's making sure he isn't running off and doing something completely idiotic if you're here?"

Peter's opened his mouth, something quick witted and snarky and no doubt very telling on his lips, but then clicked his jaw shut. Nat cut him off before he could get the words out.

"This is an emergency," she said. "There's a situation in Russia, and it's time sensitive."

"What kind of situation?"

"Human trafficking."

Fury frowned again and returned his stare back at Peter. "Iron Man came out of retirement to beat up traffickers in Russia."

"Uh huh," said Peter. "Domestic life gets a little boring. Got tired of doing the dishes."

"Oh really?" asked Fury. His eyes were narrow with suspicion, practically just slits, but Peter held strong. He resisted the urge to shuffle his feet, to fidget, and it felt like an eternity passed before Fury's expression went neutral. "So I'm supposed to believe it's Tony Stark under that armor, and not Peter Parker?"

"Yep, just me," said Peter. "Just your friendly… i-international man in a can."

Fury looked at him in a calculating sort of way. One that made Peter feel like he was being analyzed and pieced together, and one that didn't convince him Fury didn't know it wasn't really Tony under the armor. Peter could tell by looking at Nat and Bucky that they thought so too, so they were all a little surprised when Fury cleared his throat and began walking away.

"Fine," he told them, with his back turned. "Let me know how it goes when you get back."

Peter, Nat and Bucky paused, got each other confused looks, then shook it off and continued on their way to the Quinjet. Fueled with determination, fueled with a gripping fear of burying May just like they buried Ben, Peter followed Nat and Bucky on the jet, ready to get his aunt back.

* * *

Rescuing his aunt turned out to be pretty uneventful, and therefore, frustrating.

Peter was sat, crouched down, staring at the building Natasha had told him she was absolutely certain had May inside of it. She still had connections in Russia, and all over the place, really, through SHIELD. After a conversation in Russian over her cellphone in the jet, she punched in some coordinates, and they were on their way.

He supposed Happy had been right back in Queens. Peter needed more than just the Quinjet. He had no idea where to start looking, and regard Nat's ability to snatch the information up out of thin air her own personal superpower.

Peter was grateful for that, but he wasn't grateful for his assigned role in the mission. It was one that required nothing from him. One that mandated him to stand around and wait with Bucky, while Nat went inside, took care of the problem and secured the building. This role, this order from Bucky, made Peter's blood boil.

"What?" asked Bucky, after Peter complained about their situation for the third time. "You don't think Nat can handle the heavy lifting?"

It wasn't that. Peter absolutely knew she could, and he felt a bit sorry for any of the criminals who thought they were going to stop her. It wasn't that she wasn't capable, but it was that Peter was capable. It was his aunt, his family, and more than proficient enough for some lowly, backward human traffickers.

"I should be _doing something_," said Peter.

He stood up and started pacing back and forth behind where Bucky sat perfectly still, giving occasional kicks to the dirt and pulling at his hair. He glared at Bucky's back while he treaded over the grass. Peter couldn't stay that still if he tried or if he even wanted to.

"You are doing something," replied Bucky. He was unflinching. He was robot, and Peter couldn't comprehend it. "You're standing guard."

"Standing guard is bullshit."

Peter clinched fists and spun around on his heel. He stopped in his tracks when his eyes wandered back over to the building looming off in the distance. This was ridiculous. There wasn't any need for them to be standing guard, not on a simple mission like this one, and Peter needed to know.

He desperately needed to know if she was okay, needed to see that she was, and most of all, needed to hear the gentle, comforting sound of her heart beating.

"I'm going in."

"No you're not."

"I don't take orders from you," said Peter. He had enough of it, of being told what to do, from Fury, from Tony, from everyone else. "I'm not in an army, and I'm not a soldier."

"Maybe it would do you some good," said Bucky. He finally moved. He straightened up, stood up all the way, and looked back at Peter. "This is the easiest, quickest way of getting those civilians out of there unharmed." He gestured at Peter, or rather, the armor that surrounded him. "You don't even know what you're doing in that thing, and you want to go in there, clank up and down the hallways and give us away?"

Peter looked down at his arms and his hands, covered in Iron Man red and gold. He supposed he wouldn't ever truly be his own person wearing. As long as he was in Tony Stark's shadow, he might as well be a soldier, waiting for orders, or more like, waiting for his life to pan out exactly the way Tony planned it.

It was so easy to agree with Tony when the man was in his proximity, so easy to go along with his plan for him to quit the Avengers while he was stuck living under his roof, but was that what he wanted? Quit the Avengers, and inherit Stark Industries? He wasn't sure, but he was sure of one thing.

He was going inside the building, but he wasn't going in as Iron Man. He stepped out of the suit, and watched it slump over to the ground.

"Parker?" asked Bucky, turning around again. "What are you doing?"

"I'm going inside," Peter repeated. "Don't worry. I won't be 'clanking' around."

"Bad idea," said Bucky, but he turned his back and didn't try to stop Peter as he descended down the hill.

He only made it half way down the hill before he stopped again, crouched down again, and strained his eyes. Two figures in the near distance moved towards a river. One of them tall, and big, dragging the smaller one along. He could hear them, and the smaller one, the younger one, was crying for his mother. In English.

Peter remembered what Happy said back at the warehouse. That one of the women had a kid with them, and that must have been him.

He didn't waste time. He was propelled forward by the kind of satisfaction that came with being right, and by at least feeling like he was doing something, even if it wasn't helping his aunt. Peter was on them in less than a minute, and without any warnings or words, grabbed the Russian, effectively separating him from the still crying child.

He gave him a few good punches, until he fell backwards on the cold, hard ground with a thud.

The wind blew, ruffling blades of grass and bringing with it stray drops of water from the river. Peter wiped the dampness from his forehead as he stared down at the Russian an extra couple of seconds, to ensure he wasn't getting back up any time soon. Once he was sure, Peter looked back at the boy.

He was trembling, cold or scared, but most likely both.

Peter crouched down, carefully put a hand on his shoulder and looked him in his eyes. They were wide with fear, and they reminded Peter of himself. He hoped he didn't wear his fear so clearly, out there for everyone to see, but he had a feeling what he saw it this boy's eyes was the same as what Tony saw every time he saved him, or woke him up from his nightmares.

Or every time the media referred to him as the Stark heir. Every time someone questioned where Spider-Man went.

"Hey," said Peter. "It's okay. You're okay now. We're going back home."

The boy frowned, tears still coming, and shook his head. "I can't go home."

Peter narrowed his eyes and removed his hand from his shoulder, while the boy looked somewhere behind Peter, somewhere near the ground. His senses flared, but they were too late. He felt a pinch at the back of his leg, and seconds later he was face planting in the dirt.

He tried to get up. He tried to move his legs and his arms, but they wouldn't listen to him. It felt like the entire atmosphere pressed against him to keep him pinned to the ground, and the only coherent thought floating around in his head was that he'd felt this way before. This uselessness. His limbs failing to obey his brain. It was familiar.

"Spider-Man," said the man. He grabbed Peter's shirt collar, pulling him up from the ground and holding him. Even half-hanging in the air, he couldn't convince his muscles to move. "Thought we might be seeing you again. Although we worried it might be sooner. I suppose we were optimistic in thinking clearing out the warehouse would throw you off our trail?"

"W-where's May?"

"Who knows?" asked the man. "Maybe she's safe with the assassin. Maybe she isn't. You won't live to find out."

Before Peter knew it, he was falling, and hitting a sheet of what felt like razors, but what he discovered, upon sinking under the surface, was just water. Ice cold water. That stabbed every inch of him, and that would kill him before the lack of oxygen got the chance. He didn't know how long he was under there before his brain stopped screaming, stopped fighting with his limbs to move.

Peter was about to let go, was about to enter a dark, quiet place, and then there was something solid under his back again. Water flew from his mouth, and he coughed. He breathed.

The world came back in noises. May's voice sounded like warmth. That same boy was still crying. Flashes of the Sergeant hovering above him. Peter still felt like he was in the water, though. Still felt like there was a million tiny razors stabbing at his skin and his lungs.

"B-bucky," Peter gasped out. "C-cold."

The edges of his vision blurred, and that time, everything did fade to black.

* * *

A/N: Hey guys! Sorry for the wait on this one! There's 2 or 3 chapters late, and I'm almost 75% sure they won't take as long as this one did! Last week was unexpectedly crazy!

I saw Endgame! Please don't post spoilers in the comments, though, in case there's people who still haven't! But if you want to discuss, feel free to PM or message me on Tumblr!


	9. Chapter 9

Peter came out of the drug induced haze the same way he had the first time.

It was like waking up, or more like realizing he'd been awake for hours. That he had the ability to talk and move, and that he'd been talking and moving and breathing that entire time, he just wasn't aware of it.

Once again, he relied on flashes of his memories to bridge the gap between where he was when he went under, and where he existed presently. He was laid up on top of a hospital bed, in the compound's medical wing, with Bucky sitting stoically in a chair that pressed up against the wall.

Peter remembered laying on cold, hard ground, freezing to death with shallow breaths while panicked voices floated somewhere above him. He remembered Bucky's metal hand gripping his shirt collar and dragging him across the ground. There was more yelling, more panic, but then, Peter was just warm.

He'd been surrounded by armor that even his drug riddled brain knew didn't belong to him, but rather, his dad.

Reuniting with May had been difficult. A crying boy had latched himself onto one of her arms, but they managed an awkward, one armed hug, allowing him to be breath deeper, to feel peace from the terror that'd be plaguing him when he thought he might never see her again.

The quinjet ride back to the compound was crowded, and noisy. The boy didn't stop wailing. Peter was too drugged out to be able to make any sense of what was being relied to him, that he was crying for his mother, who wasn't there to dry his tears and would never be again. She hadn't made it. She died at the warehouse, in front of him.

His last memory was separating from May in the hallway of the Med center. She went into a room, and Peter was pushed into one across the hall. He shed the armor before Bucky and Nat helped handed him some water, helped him lay down and gave him a blanket.

And then he was awake, shifting his head on his pillow, and staring at Bucky while Bucky stared off into space. He did that a lot, and it made Peter wonder if he'd gotten so deep into the habit of shutting his brain off, it happened automatically.

"Thanks for not letting me drown," said Peter, frowning at the raspy out his voice came out. Peter watched as Bucky snapped out of his trance and return his stare. "Or freeze to death."

"You owe me one," he said.

Peter didn't doubt that that was true. It was just too bad he wasn't going to be an Avenger long enough to fully pay him back.

"Uh, I'm sorry, man," said Peter.

He opened and shut his mouth several times and hoped Bucky would think his hesitation was a result of the drug and not take it for what it really was, indecision about how to best phrase his apology without letting him know just exactly what it was he was actually apologizing about.

"For, uh, giving you such a hard time."

Bucky shifted around in his chair, straightened out, and blinked back at Peter. "Don't worry about it."

"No really –"

"I mean it," said Bucky. "Don't worry about it. Keeping you from falling off a cliff is just about the most exciting my life gets now that Steve is gone."

The room went quiet, and for the second time in the space of five minutes, Peter was unsure of what to say.

He hadn't known Steve well. He'd only ever met Captain America twice. Both times were in the middle of combat, and one of those times was when Peter stole his shield, so he felt unqualified to talk about him, to share in Bucky's grief.

"I'm sorry about Steve too."

Apologies were always safe to say, even if they were unproductive, and even if they did nothing to relieve Peter of his guilt. So many things were his fault. The Avengers losing their last mission, the bad guy getting away, a human trafficking ring in Queens, a newly orphaned boy, and Peter felt like, somehow, Steve was his fault, too. Just like everything else.

"Why?" said Bucky, with a shrug. "That's nothing to be sorry about. He fought to the very end, went out a hero, what he always wanted."

Peter knew what Bucky was trying to say, but the guilt still existed anyway. He had a lot to be sorry for, and even more now, after finding out Bucky took comfort in saving him. It made him doubt his decision to leave the Avengers. Maybe he wouldn't. Maybe he would walk away from Stark Industries instead.

It was a terrifying thought, one he hadn't dared to think about before, but now that he had all the information, now he knew he lost a family no matter which position he decided to abandon, it was something that was at least on the table.

He didn't have time to think about it any further. Fury appeared in the doorway of his hospital room, and Peter resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Instead he expressed his disgust by collapsing back against his pillow.

"Oh good," said Fury. "You're coherent."

Wild thoughts streamed through Peter's mind about ways he could change that. He would gladly knock himself out, or have Bucky do it for him, to avoid dealing with this conversation that was about to go down with Fury.

Bucky wasn't going to save him from this, though. His chair scrapped against the floor as he stood from it. "I'm just… I'll just leave."

Peter tried to catch his eyes as he left, but Bucky didn't look back, leaving him and Fury alone in the hospital room. Fury stared at him, for what seemed like hours, and Peter began to wonder if his eyes were still glossy from the drugs or if there was ever a silence as uncomfortable as this one. He broke it. Because he couldn't not break it.

"They know I'm Spider-Man, said Peter, rushing his words. He watched Fury's eyebrows furrow. "The Russian who threw me into the river knew anyway, so they probably all do."

"We'll take care of it," said Fury, though he still looked a little bothered by it.

Peter would have been more concerned about his secret identity if he wasn't so consumed with what Tony had told him back at the cabin. That if he left, that if he broke the terms of his house arrest, they would put him somewhere worse. It figured. Parker luck. Just as soon as he was beginning to enjoy his time with Tony and Morgan and Pepper, something like this would happy and rip all that happiness away from him.

He bunched the bed sheets in his hand and waited for the judgement, the devasting blow, the consequence of signing something he was too young to understand. He wondered if he would survive in a jailcell. He wondered if he'd ever, eventually, learn how to make time pass faster.

"Jesus Parker," said Fury. "Don't look at me like that. Well you're obviously a short-sighted idiot, who forgot that cellphones exist, I'm not a monster, and SHEILD is able to take, uh, circumstances into consideration."

"Does…that mean you're letting me go?"

"No," said Fury. "It means I'm sending you back to Tony, and I'll be by in a couple of weeks to debrief you on what happened with the Russians."

Peter released the sheets locked into his fist and let out a sigh. It was really all he could hope for. Three months at the cabin, with everyone alive and well, seemed like some version of heaven life was just waiting to wreck and maybe it would, considering Peter had a lot of decisions to make and the cabin would be anything but peaceful if they weren't the ones Tony wanted.

"There's a jet waiting for you outside," said Fury. "Don't keep them waiting."

"Can't I at least say goodbye to my aunt first?"

Fury nodded at him, ordered him to make it quick, and left his room.

Peter scrambled out of his bed, and almost tipped over when his feet hit the floor. He stretched out his arms, regained his balance and stepped across the hall.

The lights were dimmed in May's room, though she was sitting up, with her eyes wide open and fully alert. There was an IV inserted into her arm, and Peter guessed it had more to do with nutrition and hydration than it did anything else. He stepped into the room, and when she saw him, she smiled and put a single finger to her lips.

Peter saw why when he got further into the room. Tucked into May's side was the boy from earlier, and it marked the first time Peter saw him and he wasn't crying. As quietly as he could, Peter grabbed a chair and put it as close as he could to her bed, before sitting down in it.

He let out another deep breath, let the stillness of the room settle, and looked at his aunt. He supposed she was the next stop on his apology tour.

"I'm s-"

"Peter Benjamin Parker," whispered May. "Don't you dare start apologizing to me."

Her voice was so forceful, even in a whisper, and Peter still, after all these years, found it hard to argue with. Until he spared a glance at the sleeping boy. His cheeks were stained red from tears, and that was Peter's fault. His mother's blood was on his hands.

"I – I should've called Tony like Happy said, then I would have known sooner – we could've got you guys out quicker –"

May stopped him by taking Peter's hand and squeezing it. "It was a shot in the dark, honey. It would've been a miracle if you understood what we were trying to tell you in the phone call right away. It's not your fault."

Peter followed May's gaze back to the boy. "I saw him from the window, him and his mom, as they were being taken. Happy was in the shower, and I wasn't thinking, so I tried to intervene, shouted at them from the window, thinking they would give up and move on if they knew there was a witness, but obviously that didn't work out very well. They took us right out of the apartment, but they forgot about our phones. That's when you called."

"They saw your face pop up on my phone, and somehow… they knew you were Spider-Man, and it freaked them out. They made me call you back, to make sure you wouldn't come looking."

"Then I showed up at the warehouse…"

"And that freaked them out even more," said May. "They didn't want the Avengers on their case, or an investigation on Spider-Man's disappearance, so they drugged you, and dumped you somewhere."

"At the apartment," said Peter. At the apartment, where Fury was waiting to cart him off to his house arrest. Maybe Fury shared in some of the blame too, for not taking him seriously when he told him he'd been drugged, for making him leave Queens that night, for making Spider-Man leave Queens in general.

"They shouldn't have been in Queens," said Peter. "If Spider-Man was still around, they wouldn't have _dared_."

May didn't respond, just simply squeezed his hand again, and offered a soft smile. "Did you work things out with Tony? About MIT?"

Peter looked away. He thought he had. He thought he could live with walking away from the Avengers and inheriting Stark Industries, but actual distance from Tony made him realize he really hadn't. Tony's expectations for him hadn't been discussed, he'd just given him his blessing to quit being an Avenger.

Tony wrote him off. Tried to distract him with one-on-one time in the workshop. Did what he had to do to make sure his investment was secure.

"Oh Peter, you know he loves you," said May.

"What if I can't be what he needs me to be?"

"He needs you to be you," said May. "He needs you to be happy, and if MIT and SI aren't what you want, he will find a way to make peace with that, but if you force yourself to do this, any of this, you'll resent him forever, and that is something Tony would never be able to live with." She stopped, squeezed his hand a third time, then asked, "What do you want, Peter?"

The question was new. No one had ever asked him, not even after he blew up on Tony at dinner, and the newness meant he didn't know how to answer. He wasn't prepared for the question, never had time to even consider it. It seemed as though Tony had his future planned out, maybe since the day he agreed to go to Germany with him years ago, and that left no room in Peter's mind to entertain thoughts about all the different possibilities life might offer him.

Peter turned in his chair when he heard footsteps echoing down the hall, and saw Nat haunting the doorway. There were shadows, he guessed of other SHIELD agents, haunting it along with her, all of them waiting to take him back to Tony's cabin.

Strangely he didn't regard his destination as heavenly as he thought of it before. He wanted his bedroom there, wanted the family dinners, the picnics and the playing with Morgan, but he dreaded the upcoming conversation with Tony. Dreaded just the same as he did the first time.

He stood up from his chair with heavy legs. "I have to go."

May nodded and let go of his hand. "We'll be joining you as soon as we can, when Happy gets here and we're all cleared."

Peter smiled as he said goodbye and left the room. Thankful that the universe hadn't decided to take away his aunt, who was so wise, and who would stand between him and Tony if she needed too.

He still didn't know about the Avengers, about Stark Industries, or about Spider-Man. He was caught in indecision, and now haunted by a question he didn't know how to answer. What did he want?

* * *

A/N: the far from home trailer killed me, i am dead or at least just sleeping until july 2nd because I need to know what happens this second


	10. Chapter 10

Peter stepped out of May's hospital room and raised an eyebrow at Nat. "Fury's got you escorting the prisoners now?"

"I volunteered. Thought you could use a familiar face," she said. She grabbed Peter's arm and pushed him further down the hallway, in the direction of the terminal. They fell into a rushed, but easy pace, with two nameless SHIELD agents following close behind him. "And I would hardly call you a prisoner. More like a petulant child."

"Maybe don't manhandle me like a prisoner, then," said Peter. He pretended to pout as he rubbed his arm and broke out into a grin only after Nat rolled her eyes and sped up her pace.

They had a long flight ahead of them, but at least he had company, someone to troll besides the SHIELD agents. They didn't have a sense of humor. They didn't know his language the way Nat did. Their words, if they even bothered to reply, never had any bite to them, and Peter needed the snarky banter to distract himself.

From their destination. From the conversation he'd have with Tony once he got there.

A plane waited for them, just like Fury had told him, and after Peter climbed on board and collapsed into one of the seats, he looked out the window at the compound. He watched it as the plane sped down the runway, as it got smaller and smaller, then disappeared completely as the plane lifted off the ground and into the sky.

They climbed higher and higher, and once they reached their cruising altitude and straightened out, Nat appeared somewhere from behind and sat down in the seat across from him. Peter opened his mouth, but quickly clamped it shut again when he saw a new ankle monitor in her hand. His disgust must've reached his face, because it was her turn to be amused.

"We can do this now or later," she said, holding up the tracking device.

"Later."

The less time he had it locked around the ankle, the better. A sense of dread came with the idea of having it on him again. Depending on how his talk with Tony went, the three months the ankle bracelet represented would either be a vacation with family or walking through wreckage in a stranger's home.

Peter looked away from Nat, and back out at the clouds. He couldn't really see anything. It was too dark, and they were up too high.

"I did try to warn you," said Nat, tossing the monitor on the empty seat beside her. She did. He remembered. He just didn't care. "I'm supposed to threaten Tony, so he doesn't take this one off."

"He only did that because there was an emergency."

Nat rolled her eyes again. "Or because he loves you too much to say no. He knew you would hate him if he didn't let you go and be a part of the rescue team. Tony knows he could've easily me or anyone else and we would've taken care of it just the same."

Peter knew that. He knew Tony loved him like a son. He knew Tony altered space and time to bring him back from dust, but even that knowledge couldn't erase his dread. It couldn't erase the unknown loomed in the distance.

For everything he did know, there was something he didn't.

He didn't know how Tony was going to react to being told Peter didn't want to be his heir. He didn't know if telling him that would be the same as telling him he didn't want to be his son, a second time. That wasn't true. It hadn't been the first time he said it out of anger and frustration, and it never would be. Most of all, Peter didn't know if they would still be a family, if there would be anything left to tether them all together, if he backed out of Tony's will.

"He's not going to love me so much after tonight," said Peter. He didn't know what compelled him to give a voice to his fears. Maybe practice. Maybe he needed to practice saying it out loud, before he could say it to Tony. "I'm going to tell him that I don't want SI."

"Really?" asked Nat. She tilted her head at him, genuinely surprised. "You don't?"

"Well, maybe," said Peter. Then shook his head. "I – I guess I don't know. I'm just not really cut out to be a CEO or a business owner or whatever he wants me to be."

He wasn't. He was Peter Parker from Queens, who collected spare parts out of dumpsters and rescued kittens from trees, but even as he thought it, there was a part that rang untrue. If he was honest with himself, he knew he hadn't been that person for a long time. That teenage version of himself, that got lost in time.

Now he was just Peter Parker, MIT dropout and that one Avenger who screwed up every mission he went on.

"I'm not really cut out to be Avenger, either," said Peter.

"Neither was I."

Just three words was all it took to shake his worldview. That if Nat Romanoff, Black Widow, the Avenger who took out an entire army of traffickers by herself, once felt like she wasn't enough to be an Avenger, maybe everyone did.

He wondered if Tony used to sit around and think about how he wasn't enough to be Iron Man. Peter shook his head and stared back out the window. He couldn't imagine it. He couldn't picture him or anyone else he looked up to thinking that way, and supposed it was more likely he'd just caught a rare moment of pity from Nat.

Pretty soothing words that weren't really pretty or soothing, because deep down Peter knew they weren't true.

By the time the plane landed, after turning those words around in his head over and over again, he was fully convinced they were lies. The dread switched back on as him and Nat walked through the trees, towards the cabin, and kicked up in intensity when Peter's eyes landed on the porch.

Tony sat in his usual chair, only this time he wasn't alone. Morgan sat up on his lap, clinging onto his neck, until she noticed Peter and Nat walking closer. She jumped away from Tony, flew down the porch stairs and darted at them.

"Pete," she said, as she hugged his legs. Peter picked up so they could hug properly. "You left without saying goodbye."

"I'm sorry," said Peter. "Never again."

His answer must've been enough for her, because her arms clung around his neck tighter as Peter walked up the steps of the porch. He put her down, and she raced inside the house, leaving the front door wide open and expecting them to follow.

Peter didn't make it in the house right away. He was swept away by another hug. It caught him off guard, made him stumble and almost fall, but Tony's arms pulled him closer and steadied him. When he finally pulled away, Tony messed with his hair and Peter's hand automatically went up to fix it.

"Thanks for bringing him back in one piece," Tony told him, and Peter frowned. Like he wasn't capable of bring himself back in one piece.

Sometimes Peter forgot how much Tony worried. Sometimes he forgot that once he died in Tony's arms, but Tony wasn't gifted with that same ability to forget. Not that day, or the hours and the days he was dead.

They all headed into the living room, where Peter sunk into the couch next to Tony and allowed Nat to lock the monitor back around his ankle. It wasn't too tight, or too loose, not this time, but it was still heavy with dread. If his confession to Tony didn't go well, it'd be the anchor tying down him in the middle of a storm.

Nat left them by wishing Peter good luck and was met by goodbye and a raised eyebrow from Tony, who was, no doubt trying to figure out what she meant by it.

After she was gone, it was just Peter and Morgan and Tony in the living room, in the middle of the night. They decided to camp out there. For Morgan's sake, Tony claimed, because she had woken up with a bad dream and found Peter's bed empty, but Peter wondered if it also wasn't for Tony's sake. He still liked to keep Peter close after missions.

He didn't mind either way. They piled up blankets and pillows and made makeshift beds. Tony ordered FRIDAY to turn on Moana, for the thousandth time. It was in vain. Morgan was out cold before the first song started.

The living room was dark, lit up only by the soft glow of TV, and when Peter looked over at Tony, he figured it was now or never. He crossed his fingers and hoped May and Happy wouldn't take very long getting out to the cabin. He might need them for backup.

"Um hey Tony," said Peter. His voice came out soft, and unsure, but he meant it to come out strong and commanding, like the way Tony's used to when yelling at the other Avengers or when speaking in a press conference.

"Hmm?" Tony's cellphone was in his hand, and it took him a few seconds to look away from the screen.

"Uh I was just," said Peter. "Just thinking we could talk."

Peter's eyes flickered towards Morgan. Only her head was visible from beneath the blankets as she slept. It was a good time. Tony couldn't shout without waking her.

"Of course, we can always talk," said Tony. He left his arm chair and sat down on the coffee table across from him, and Peter sat up, pulling the blankets around his arms for support. "I'm always listening, to whatever you have to say."

"Well," said Peter, then paused. He didn't know how to start this conversation. "… do you remember when we had that argument at dinner?"

"You were feeling pressured," said Tony. "Are you still feeling that way?"

"Yeah," said Peter. He picked at a loose thread on his blanket. "I was just thinking… what if I don't want Stark Industries… what if I want something else?"

Peter waited for the world to shift. He was sure it would, after saying those words out loud to Tony, after rejecting him and his plans, but nothing happened. Cartoon characters sang a song on the TV, the wind hit the house, Morgan shifted in her sleep. Tony stayed unchanged, unbothered, as if Peter had just recited tomorrow's weather forecast.

"What else?"

"I- I don't know."

Tony scooted back on the coffee table. "You don't know what you want. I never gave you time to figure it out."

He said it as if he were having a big revelation, as if he'd been working out a problem and had finally, after years, accidentally stumbled on the solution. Disappointment flashed across Tony's face and Peter's mind whirled, trying to figure out how he could make it go way. Peter knew it wasn't aimed at him. Tony's disappointment was focused on himself, and somehow, that made Peter feel even worse.

"Why didn't you tell me this sooner?"

"I didn't want to disappoint you," said Peter. He motioned to the living room, to Morgan, to everything around them that made them a family. "I – didn't want this to go away."

"That would never happen," said Tony. "I don't care what you do. As long as your happy, I don't care, and I hate to break to you, pal, but you're stuck with me and this family forever."

Peter offered a shaky smile and released a breath. That's all he really wanted to hear, and after hearing it, he didn't understand why he ever thought anything different. Pressure. Anxiety. It made people, including Peter, forget to see what was right in front of them, made them think stupid and ridiculous things.

Tony leaned over and ruffled Peter's hair a second time that evening. "I love you, kid."

* * *

The morning after their living room campout, Peter woke up to the smell of Tony making chocolate chip pancakes in the kitchen and a stomach ache that didn't mix well. He threw his blankets off him. He ran to the nearest bathroom, shoved his knees on the floor next to the toilet and threw up.

As it turned out, nearly drowning in a freezing river somewhere in Russia was too much even for Peter's spidey immune system.

Once he was done, once his stomach was empty and he'd stopped gagging up acid, Tony peeled him up off the floor and guided him to his bedroom, where he'd be quarantined for the next several days with a fever.

No one wanted Morgan catching his germs, so Tony was Peter's only visitor. He'd come in and out of his room with water bottles, with Gatorade, with soup, with medicine and with anything else Tony decided he needed. If Peter had any doubt before about Tony's declaration that he was stuck with him, they were cleared up by his excessive mother-henning.

He thought he wanted May and Happy to hurry to the cabin to meditate an argument, but the way it turned out, he needed them there to chill Tony out. It was just a fever, just a stomach bug, and the man, the grown man, was acting like he would wilt away any second.

"If you don't start rehydrating yourself," said Tony, beckoning to the unopened bottle of Gatorade and untouched bowl of soul, "I'm knocking you out and hooking you up to an IV."

Peter glared at him as he unscrewed the cap off the Gatorade and didn't look away as he took a big gulp of it. Tony wasn't bothered. He simply rechecked Peter's temperature with a hand on his forehead and left the room. Once he was gone, and Peter heard he was at the bottom of the stairs, he set the Gatorade back on the nightstand and collapsed into his pillows with a groan.

On his third day of the virus, his door creaked open slowly and he watched, a bit dazed, as the top of Morgan's head got closer and closer, until her face was visible, and she was standing just inches away.

"Hi Pete," she said.

"Hey Morgan," said Peter. "You're not supposed to be in here. You know dad will freak out if he finds out."

If Tony was this bad when Peter, who was technically an adult, was sick, he didn't want to imagine Tony if Morgan happened to come down with the same bug.

"Mmhm," she said, like she not only knew, but didn't care much about it. "I had to make sure you were really in here and you didn't escape again."

"I'm not going to escape," Peter tried to reassure. He didn't bother explaining he hadn't actually tried to escape the first time. It would've been all the same to Morgan. She woke up, sought him out after a nightmare, and he hadn't been there.

"No lies?"

"No lies," said Peter. "I don't want to escape."

He still didn't know what he wanted for his future, but at least he knew what he wanted from the next three months. He wanted his family. He wanted to hang out with Morgan and help Tony in the workshop and just… relax. No pressure. Just vacation.

"But you have to get out of here, before you get my germs."

Morgan didn't move. "Did you throw up?"

"Yeah," said Peter. "I threw up 3000."

Everyone knew that was the most. At least in Morgan's terms, but they didn't pretend at the cabin. Morgan's terms were everyone's terms.

Her eyes went wide, her face crinkled, and she backed away from his bed. She told him bye, then ran out of his room, leaving Peter to once again fall back down into his bed and bury his head under the cool pillows. That was all there was. Just him and his bed and his pillows, then finally, rest.

* * *

A/N: Just one more chapter of this left! I plan to have it out by this time next week, if life doesn't get too crazy! Thanks so much for following along with this story!


	11. Chapter 11

By the time Tony declared he well enough to leave his room, Peter didn't have any desire to remove himself from his bed.

His fever was gone, but there was still an ache behind his eyes, and he was still tired in a way sleep didn't seem to fix. Tony didn't care about that.

"Shower," he ordered, as he ripped the comforter from the bed, and then pointed to the bathroom.

With a groan, and because he didn't feel like he had any other options without his covers to disappear under, Peter rolled off his bed and dragged his feet across the floor, making a show of it, making it clear to Tony how miserable he was making him by yanking him away from his rest.

The shower felt good. Warm water rinsed away all the germs, and somehow, took with it all the stress that had plagued him for the past couple of months as it disappeared down the drain.

Peter had every intention of diving back into his bed, but when he stepped out of his bathroom, running a towel through his soaked hair and with fresh clothes on, he frowned at what he saw. His was bed stripped, completely bare, and with a sigh, he guessed Tony took all his bedding down to be washed. Figured.

His eyes drifted to his couch, in the corner of the room near the TV. That would do. It would have to, but just as he started towards it, he heard familiar voices coming from downstairs. Voices that compelled him to leave his room.

Peter stepped out into the hall and looked into the living room, with his hands on the railing, as May and Happy stood down below. The boy was with them, the one whose mother had died. He didn't talk. Just looked up and around, eyes wide, at the interior of Tony Stark's cabin, with a Hulk plushie gripped in his hand and clutched to his chest.

Tony tried to make a joke, something lame about the real Bruce Banner being his therapist, but the boy took a step backwards, gripped Happy's hand with the one that wasn't holding Hulk and continued to stare up at the ceiling.

Then Morgan came into view. She marched up to him, and said, "I'm Morgan. Do you want to play Legos?"

Peter frowned. He thought that was their thing. He was being replaced.

The boy looked up at Happy, then at May, who smiled and nodded at him. Tentatively, he let go of Happy's hand and followed Morgan out of sight to the block ocean of blue Legos.

Eventually, Peter descended the stairway, and got caught up into a sea of obligatory reunion hugs.

"You're feeling better, though?" asked May, with a tilted head. She was the one who was kidnapped and flew to Russia, and she was asking about his stomach virus? "You don't feel sick anymore?"

Peter shook his head, and started to answer, but Tony cut him off.

"No thanks to himself," said Tony. "He has no self-preservation skills."

Peter rolled his eyes at him, and Tony glared back, and May and Happy looked on trying to, unsuccessfully, hide their amusement while the little kids played in the living room. It was familiar, in the best ways. It was normal. Everything was back to normal, and everything was fine.

* * *

Later that day, Peter sat out on the porch with Happy and May, and watched the kids play. The ache from behind his eyes was mostly gone, and his sleepiness was mostly healed by the shower, but he wouldn't be admitting that to Tony anytime soon.

He listened as May explained to him that the boy – his name was Evan, as it turned out – didn't have anyone else after his mom died, and that he was going to be staying with May and Happy. Permanently.

"I mean, are you sure?" asked Peter. It wasn't as if he thought they should just pass him off to social services. He just thought May and Happy were enjoying their time together, alone, without kids. It was a sacrifice, but also, one that didn't surprise Peter.

Once, May and Ben made the same kind of sacrifice for him.

"Yeah," said May. She took Happy's hand in hers. "We weren't planning on kids, but this, this feels right."

Peter looked over at Happy, who was silent. He could tell by his expression, by the way his eyes were fixed on the kids, and because of that, he wasn't paying attention to their conversation, that he agreed with May.

"Besides," May told him. "It should be easy. I've already had my practice kid."

The front door to the cabin opened, and Tony appeared on the porch, carrying a tray of glasses filled to the top with iced tea. "Oh, that's funny, Peter was my practice kid, too."

Peter frowned, while May and Tony laughed at their own lame joke, then beckoned at the monitor around his ankle. "Maybe that's why I turned into a criminal."

"Ha! You, a criminal," said Tony, as if it were the most ridiculous thought ever spoken out loud.

"I could be a criminal."

May and Happy and Tony all exchanged looks of doubt, before breaking out into chuckles.

Peter left the adults on the porch, so they could amuse themselves with more lame jokes only parents were capable of producing and went to play with the kids. He knew he made the right decision when he heard May start talking about the days after Peter saw Iron Man on the news for the first time, and consequently, the day that started his Iron Man and Tony Stark obsession.

* * *

Days at the cabin, with his family, passed by exactly how Peter wished they would.

There were days outside, by the lake, on the lake, and there were nights outside, too, where they huddled around a fire and made smores. It was always messy. The little kids got sticky, melted marshmallow everywhere, but it was worth it every time. Besides, Peter wasn't the one washing them up afterward.

They had movie days when it rained, and when it grew too cold to be outside, and on those days, Peter played with Morgan and Evan. They built the Lego ocean to twice the size it had been. It got so big, it threatened to take over the living room, and Tony made Peter convince them it was time for the blocks to go back into the boxes, to create something new.

When the kids went to bed, Peter liked to join Tony and Happy at the dining room table, where they drank beers and talked about life. Peter mostly listened. They told stories about their lives Peter had never heard, and he wondered how that was possible, how life was so massive and infinite, even people he knew for years still had secrets to discover.

Even May, who Peter has known the longest, still had new pieces of wisdom to give him, and now to his new younger brother.

Nick Fury showing up on the front porch was like waking up from a dream, like getting out of bed and realizing the world really wasn't as warm as it was from underneath the covers.

Reality was still there. The man with the eye-patch was proof.

"Mr. Director Fury," said Morgan, she blinked up at him as he haunted their foyer. "What happened to your other eye? Are you a pirate?"

Tony laughed, hard, until he realized his laugh was the only sound in the room and it died out. Peter looked down at his shoes, with a small smile. He'd stopped himself from asking that same question so many times, and he was glad Morgan finally voiced it out loud, even if Fury stayed silent and refused to answer.

After a few seconds of stiff, awkward silence, Tony showed them up to Pepper's office, where Peter and Fury could talk privately. He gave Tony puppy dog eyes as he shut the door, hoping he might stay, but when it fell shut, Tony was on the other side of it.

Peter had never been in Pepper's home office before. It was huge, with bookcases that lined the walls and went up to the ceiling, and with a black leather couch that sat across from a giant oak desk. The office chair behind the desk alluded authority, and Peter wasn't sure how that could be, how a simple black rolling chair could say and mean so much.

Neither Peter nor Fury took the couch or the chair. They both stood, in the center of the office, and stared at each other.

Fury had the first words. "You're fired."

"I'm, uh, um, w-what?"

"You're no longer an Avenger," said Fury.

"I signed a contract," said Peter, and he'd learned his lesson. He wouldn't be signing anymore of those when it came to New Accords and Avengers business. Not if it meant he couldn't be the friendly neighborhood hero Queens needed.

"It's been terminated. Congratulations, you're a free man," said Fury, then held up a hand. "Of course, a free man _after _your house arrest is over. Dismissed contract or not, you still broke the terms."

Peter wasn't able to speak for several seconds. He didn't appreciate the term fired, he'd never been fired from anything, but then, there was relief. He wasn't an Avenger. The decision wasn't his, so the guilt didn't belong to him either. He looked at Nick Fury, who stood across from him, hard faced with an eye patch, and wondered if he'd been looking at him the wrong way, just like he had been with Tony.

A favor. Nick Fury was doing him a favor.

"As it turns out," said Fury, turning away from Peter, and looking out the window. "Queens needs Spider-Man more than we do. All sorts of unsavory business practices popped up while you weren't around. I expect you'll take care of that when you get back home."

There was another pause in the conversation, as Peter thought about Bucky and Nat and the other Avengers he was leaving behind. He'd miss them.

"Of course," said Fury. "We'll still call you if we need you, if we have anymore intergalactic incidents, or wizards drunk with power."

Peter forced out a chuckle. "I can't wait."

Fury turned away from the window, looked back at Peter, nodded, then left the office.

Peter would've been not far behind him, but when he tried to exit, he was blocked off by both sets of parents. He was forced backwards, back into the office, and seemingly, trapped there.

Tony looked at Peter and pointed to the chair that sat behind Pepper's desk. "Sit."

Peter gave all four adults separate, confused looks, but did as he was told. The cushioned chair squished as he sunk down into it, and the wheels shifted in the carpet. He didn't take his eyes off Tony, Pepper, May and Happy as they gathered on the couch across from the desk that sat between them.

Nothing good ever came from both sets of parents in the same place, after a meeting had been called.

"What's," started Peter, he looked at each one of them again. "Going on?"

"We all need to have a discussion," said Tony. "About the future, and about MIT."

Peter deflated and gripped the chair's armrest. He thought admitting to Tony he wasn't sure if he wanted SI effectively killed the MIT argument, or at least put it off for another couple of months. He guessed not, though, and by all the tense looks on the faces across for him, he was also able to guess the next words out of Tony's mouth before he said them.

"You're going back to school, Pete."

Peter's eyes flew towards May.

"I'm backing him up on this one," she told. "You're almost finished. It'd be a waste of your time and effort to quit now."

All the words of protest had in his chest got pushed out and expressed with a single breath of air, and a defeated sigh. It was worse than he originally thought. They had talked about this, all of them, and they were united in their decision. Peter couldn't help feeling just a little bit betrayed. He thought Tony had understood, that he was going to back off, but all he did was rally some troops.

"So," continued Tony. "You'll go back to school, finish up your degree -

"-with honors," added May.

"Right, and after you graduate, you can do whatever."

"Whatever?"

"Whatever you want," said Tony. "Whatever you think you want, you know maybe travel, so you can figure it out, or get into some trouble, be Spider-Man."

The idea of whatever was as massive as the ocean, and just as magical. It was unknown. It wasn't predefined by the expectations of anyone else. It took weight off the thought of graduating MIT. He did like school. It had only become filled with dread when he realized he was nearly finished, and after he got a degree, he'd have a company to run.

Still, the idea of whatever was also a little bit too good to be true.

Peter gave Tony a challenging look. "So, say I wanted to become a pizza delivery guy –"

"I'm giving you an allowance, why would you-" Tony stopped short when Pepper elbowed him in the stomach. "Of course, if you want to take an, uh, a job opening, that's your decision to make."

Peter grinned at him, and considered he might apply somewhere to deliver pizzas, just to see how long it'd take for Tony to break.

"Then," said Pepper, taking over for Tony, "When you turn twenty-five, we'll expect your decision."

"A decision…?" Peter trailed off.

"Yeah," said Pepper. "If you want the company, you can start shadowing me to get a feel for it, but if not, you just say so, and it's no big deal."

The way she said it, the way Tony's expression had already relaxed again after the pizza scare, Peter believed her. No pressure. No big deal. Just what Peter wanted, whatever that was, and he had a long time to figure that out.

Maybe he would deliver pizzas, maybe he'd do nothing except protect the streets of Queens, and maybe someday he would take over SI for Pepper and Tony. But he didn't know.

The future, even his own, was unknown-able. It was unknown, but it was his, for the first time in a long time, and it'd be whatever he wanted it to be.

He turned the massive office chair with his foot and looked out the window. The sun was bright, the cloudless sky was the perfect shade of blue, one that seemed to stretch on for forever.

* * *

A/N: So that's it! The story is over and I really can't believe it! Thanks so much for sticking with me and leaving your comments, it means everything!


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